What is PowerPoint Designer?

Last updated on August 12th, 2023

When I switched from PowerPoint 2013 to PowerPoint 2016, I could instantly feel the difference. Not only is the latest edition of PowerPoint smoother in functionality than its predecessor but has some of the most amazing features hidden discretely, and one of them is PowerPoint Designer.

What can PowerPoint Designer Do?

PowerPoint Designer is a new feature available since PowerPoint 2016, which helps transform your slides into something special with the aid of automatically generated design suggestions.

PowerPoint Designer

How Does PowerPoint Designer Work?

PowerPoint Designer starts automatically providing design suggestions when you add an image to a slide. For example, when you add a picture to your PowerPoint slide, PowerPoint will show you a number of slide layouts to choose from. These layouts will be as good as professionally designed slides. So, in other words, PowerPoint Designer gives you automatically generated layout suggestions using what can be deemed as an artificial intelligence.

Pro Tip: For more AI tools for presenters, check out our special article on AI PPT maker tools for creators and presenters.

How does PowerPoint designer work - Example of the beginnings of PowerPoint Designer
Example of the beginnings of PowerPoint Designer

Save Hours of Work with Automatic Design Suggestions

This simple PowerPoint feature can save you hours of work and give you a touch of the good stuff that professional PowerPoint templates or graphic designers provide. And all that in a few click. You need not to worry about making your slides look good, the legibility of your text or that perfect placement for your added content; as all that is taken care of automatically.

PowerPoint designer slide suggestions

Pick Layouts Suggestions for Photographic & Nonphotographic Images

PowerPoint Designer not only provides design suggestions when you add a photographic image but also for other kinds of images, such as perhaps a chart image. So, if you were to add a chart image to your slide, you will automatically get design suggestions with layouts that can perfectly reveal your chart with the best possible design. PowerPoint Designer can differentiate between photographic and non-photographic images and adjust layout suggestions accordingly.

Get suggestions for photographic and nonphotographic images

Introduction to PowerPoint Designer

The below video gives an overview of PowerPoint Designer and another excellent PowerPoint 2016 feature called Morph.

PowerPoint Designer Requirements

You will need an Office 365 subscription for PowerPoint Designer to work. Furthermore, since designer uses the internet, you will have to be online to get design suggestions.

Unfortunately, the design suggestions don’t work with custom themes, therefore, you will require a default PowerPoint theme. Moreover, your slides will require a Title or Title + Content slide layout.

To receive design suggestions, you will need to use pictures that are larger than 200×200 pixels belonging to JPG, PNG, BMP or GIF image formats.

You can make sure that PowerPoint Designer is enabled via File -> Options -> General -> Enable PowerPoint Designer.

About Farshad

IT professional, communications specialist and Blogger!

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