PowerPoint – Custom Shape Image Placeholder

With my job requiring the use of PowerPoint to design deck templates for other departments, the struggle can often be achieving the balance between accessibility and visual fidelity. The decks need to look good, but they also need to be easy to use with minimal risk of items being moved or deleted in ways that go against the brand. Inserting images in PowerPoint is easy, as is creating a placeholder shape to insert them into. What becomes a little more cumbersome though is generating a custom shape brand element to fill with your photos — something that can add real impact to your slides.

PowerPoint – Margins & Columns

Starting a new job on Monday, I decided to refresh my skills in Microsoft PowerPoint. The software has evolved plenty over the years but bizarrely there still remains no way to simply set margins and/or columns. When a software is now capable of removing backgrounds from images but still cannot set layouts, it does make you question the priorities of Microsoft, especially when the function can be found elsewhere across the Office Suite. Thankfully, there is a (slightly convoluted) workaround.