You may have observed an omnipresent company logo on many slides in a presentation. That raises a question: do you
really need to have a company logo on all your slides? First, it takes a fair amount of space. Secondly, the audience knows
which company the speaker belongs to since that information is almost always placed on the first slide. Also speakers do
introduce themselves and their companies. So, why do all slides need that extra branding? All these questions are fair, and
there are equally honest answers for them. You should certainly add a company logo to your first slide, and then place a more
subtle or watermarked logo on the rest of the slides, or even no logo at all. Fortunately, PowerPoint makes it easy to add a
logo to all your slides, and then make sure that some slides have no logo at all or even a more understated version of the
logo.
Before you begin, you must get your logo in a graphic file format that PowerPoint can understand. It's always better to work
with a vector file format such as EMF or WMF rather than the bitmap file formats that PowerPoint supports.
Additionally, make sure that you have two versions of the logo: one should be the regular, prominent logo used company-wide.
Additionally, make sure you have a more subtle version of the logo that does not stand out. Look at Figure 1
below, where the Indezine logo on the left is prominent enough to stand out. The same logo towards the right has less saturated
colors, and will fade well with the background so that your other slide content can get the attention it deserves.
Figure 1: Indezine logos with both prominent and subtle look
Note: Most Mac users are more familiar with AI or EPS files when it comes to vector graphics. However, PowerPoint
seems to like EMFs the best! Also, almost all company logos are made available in either Adobe Illustrator's AI or EPS file
formats. These are the industry standards and most logo designers and in-house graphic designers will certainly have a copy of
your company logo in these file formats. Unfortunately, both these file formats are not PowerPoint friendly. Although PowerPoint
can insert EPS files, more often than not, the results can be unpredictable. Ask your design team to export the logo files to EMF
from within their dedicated graphic program. Also, ensure that you get both the regular and subtle versions of the logo.
Follow these steps to learn how you can add these logos to your Slide Master
in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac:
- Select the View | Master | Slide Master menu option, as shown in
Figure 2.
Figure 2: Slide Master option within the View menu- This opens the Slide Master View,
as shown in Figure 3. In Slide Master view, you'll see that the left pane contains two distinctly different
elements: a larger thumbnail representing the Slide Master (highlighted in red
within Figure 3) and several smaller slide thumbnails below representing individual
Slide Layouts (highlighted in blue within Figure 3).
Figure 3: Slide Master and Slide Layouts within PowerPoint- With your Slide Master selected, insert the subtle version of the logo. Since a logo is a picture
file, you place it in the same way as you
insert a picture. By default,
PowerPoint places the logo right in the center of your Slide Master, as shown in Figure 4, below. Also notice
that the logo shows up within all the Slide Layouts which are associated with that particular Slide Master (refer
to the Slides pane on the left in Figure 4, below).
Figure 4: Logo inserted within the Slide Master also appears on Slide Layouts- Now, you can
resize and
reposition the logo to an appropriate location
on your Slide Master, as you can see in Figure 5. We resized the logo and placed it at the
bottom left of the Slide Master.
Figure 5: Logo resized and repositioned- Right-click (or Ctrl + click) the logo, and choose Arrange |
Send to Back from the context menu, as shown in Figure 6. You need to do so because all slide
content within placeholders need to be placed above the logo.
Figure 6: Send to Back option selected- Now you can hide the logo from some individual Slide Layouts. You do so for two reasons:
firstly, you may want a clean slide without a logo for some Slide Layouts. Typically the Blank
and Title Only layouts are good candidates for removing the logo altogether. Additionally, you may want the
prominent version of your logo for the Title Layout. To do so, you first need to hide the subtle version
of the logo we just added to the Slide Master.
- Select the Title Layout (or any other layout required), as shown in Figure 7,
below. Then access the Slide Master tab of the
Ribbon, and locate the Hide Graphics
check-box, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 7.
Figure 7: Hide Graphics check-box must be selected- The Hide Graphics check-box shown in Figure 7, above is not selected. To select
the check-box just click on it. A tick mark indicates its selected status as shown highlighted in
red within Figure 8, below. This action will hide the subtle logo from your
Title Layout, as shown in Figure 8.
Figure 8: Logo hidden from Title Layout- Now to add the prominent variation of the logo, select the Title Layout and
insert the logo (picture). By
default, this logo is also placed right in the center of your Title Layout, as shown in
Figure 9, below. Also notice that the logo shows up only within the Title Layout (refer to the
Slides pane on the left in Figure 9, below). You'll notice that this prominent logo does not show up within the
Slide Master or even the other Slide Layouts.
Figure 9: Prominent version of logo added within the Title Layout- We resized
and repositioned the logo to an appropriate
location on the Title Layout, as you can see in Figure 10, below. Finally,
right-click (or Ctrl + click) the logo, and choose the Arrange |
Send to Back option from the contextual menu (refer to Figure 6, earlier in this page).
Figure 10: Logo resized and repositioned- Similarly, you can choose individual slide layouts and select the Hide Graphic
check-box to hide the logo or any other inserted graphic from that particular layout. When done, access the
Slide Master tab of the Ribbon, and click the Close button (highlighted
in blue within Figure 8, shown earlier on this page). This will get you back
to Normal view.
- Access the Home tab of the Ribbon and, click the Layout
button to bring up the Layout drop-down gallery you see in Figure 11, below. Notice that
except the Title Layout, which has the prominent logo, the subtle logo is visible in all the other
layouts.
Figure 11: Slide Layouts with the logo added- Save your presentation often.
