Improving the look and feel of them, well that naturally comes second when the clock is ticking.
But what if you didn’t have to choose? What if you could do both without having the spend any more time on them…
IG can do the design heavy lifting for you. So that you can keep your focus where it matters most.
Here’s how…
The client in this case study was a small, but growing, boutique consultancy working in the public sector. They wanted to improve their standard of PowerPoint designs and consistency across outputs. Without compromising their already strapped time.
The templates they’d had since they started the business were no longer fit for purpose. These templates had been created by a branding agency but weren’t relevant for the kind of consulting outputs that they were now creating.
When templates are designed without any expert knowledge of your industry, you will likely run into the same problems.
These were:
Limited Colour Palette
The limited colour palette (of only two colours!) meant that when inserting charts or graphs, there were only two colours from which they could choose! Needless to say, labelling more than two different data series was near impossible!
Layout
The layout built into the slides wasn’t ideal for consulting. Leaving little space for actual content. They were also very basic. This meant that different team members were creating new layouts from scratch. These were consistently inconsistent.
As staff increased, different team members came in with different ideas as to how to utilise the brand. Everyone was therefore creating templates on their own. The result? Outputs were going to clients, week on week, looking vastly different from one another. Depending on which team member had been working on it.
IG’s first plan of action was to recreate the master template.
By reviewing recent deliverables, IG was able to understand the type of content and layouts the client had been producing up until this point.
Next, IG spoke with the relevant members of the team to depict which slides, and design elements, they were pleased with and wanted to carry forward into the new templates.
Secondly, when redesigning the templates, IG built in lots of helpful functional layouts to save the team time. Pre-populating slides with tables, charts, team bio slides, etc.
By implementing design improvements and building standardised layouts, the client can now reuse these master templates again and again. And achieve cohesion and consistency.
IG also provided expert suggestions for developing the colour palette further and eventually worked with the team to finalise a secondary, more extended colour palette to be used within documents.
Once the updated style was in place, IG produced an easy-to-use style guide for the consultants. This guide explained how to use the new templates, as well as the necessary rules around them. Such as colours, fonts, slide margins, use of shapes… and more!
So that any existing or new member of the team could jump straight in and create slides that would be consistent.
As well as redesigning the client’s templates within Word and Excel, IG also worked on specific client deliverables. Helping the team to elevate the design of key presentations that are sent regularly to clients.
This is an ongoing relationship where IG now support the client on a weekly basis with any important slides, meetings and deliverables that they need for their various projects. The client recognises that IG knows their business, inside out. And when deadlines are tight, IG can provide overnight document support to get proposals out on time. Click here to read more about having your own Account Manager at IG!
Creating a cohesive approach to any business brings about respect within the industry. Thanks to the support from IG, this client now has a finely tuned set of consistent branded templates across their entire output.
If you’d like help improving your templates and standardising the outputs across your team, we’d love to help. Or perhaps, you just want to hand it all off and let IG do it for you.
Whatever your business requirements, IG can tailor a design service to suit your needs.
Get in touch with IG directly, here.