At UPM we use PowerPoint presentations in various forms, depending on their purpose: Informative and instructional presentations – often serve as standalone documents that are distributed internally among employees or are published on websites. These contain a lot of text as their purpose is to cover the topic in its entirety. They can be used for business, sales and client pitches.
On the other hand, visual presentations that contain less text and more visual elements serve as a supporting medium for life and online presentations and complement the speaker’s thoughts highlighting the key points and grabbing the audience’s attention. They can be used for project planning, ideation phase, presenting results, etc. These shall be more engaging and can contain elements of storytelling or infographics.
Crafting professional presentations
In general, key principles for effective slides include:
- Conciseness: use minimal text.
- Visual engagement: ensure good contrast and proportions.
- Visuals: use relevant images, charts, and graphs – best if they come from our UPM’s base in Material Hub.
- Readability: utilize large, legible fonts with good contrast. Avoid text overload.
- Hierarchy: highlight key points using size, color, or placement.
- Engagement: use animations and transitions sparingly. Be cautious with them in online presentations to avoid disruptions.
Typography & colors
In PowerPoint, similarly to all Office 365 applications, we use Aptos for regular text and Aptos Semibold for headlines and highlights. In the master slides available in Material Hub there are embedded UPM brand colors and fonts, together with layouts.
PowerPoint grid and layouts
At UPM we use a customized layout for 16:9 presentations, where the logo is placed in the upper right corner and the headline and content texts and graphic elements frames are in fixed positions. Please, do not place any other elements in the logo’s safe area.
Master layout styles
- with a light background (white or Transparent) and full color logo,
- with a dark background (Trust or Reliable) and a white logo.
Choose the best layout for your content via the Layout dropdown (right-click slide or use the top menu). You can switch layouts anytime, as long as you use the built-in content fields.
Title slides
For title slides, you can use full-page photos or uniform UPM colors (primary ones: Reliable, Trust and Energy, and secondary: Transparent).
In the template file, you will also find title slides with a Griffin wing element in the background. You can use these for your titles and chapter titles.
Photos style
Please adhere to the UPM visual narrative guidelines when incorporating photos into your PowerPoint presentations. Ensure that you use brand and business-level imagery according to the preferred layouts and cropping specifications.
UPM icons
There is also a selection of icons in the UPM Trust green color available in the PowerPoint templates file in Material Hub. You can easily copy and paste them to your own presentation. The icons are in .svg format, therefore you can also change their color to white when pasting them to a darker background.
Practical tips for creating PowerPoint presentations
Think of your presentation as a strategic roadmap, where each graphic element and bullet-point is a milestone guiding your audience towards your ultimate goal. Remember to follow these guidelines to ensure your presentation is effective and well-received:
- A professional PowerPoint presentation in a company setting not only improves the delivery and impact of the information but also positively influences the audience’s perception of the presenter and the company.
- By leveraging psychological principles and visual design techniques, such presentations can effectively engage, inform, and persuade the audience.
- Limit text per slide: focus on an interesting visualization of the content and limit written content to a minimum.
- Use high-quality assets: use only original icons available at UPM’s Material Hub and high-quality photos.
- Use simple, 2D graphic graphic elements and charts without shadows, 3D effects, or illustration styles.
- Stick to UPM's primary and secondary colors for a uniform look.
- Icons: Always use UPM-designed icons available in Material Hub.