1 Slide, 5 Ways: Headline

When you don’t know where to take your presentation, Smart Slide templates are a great starting point. The customizable templates use guardrails to protect the design as you add in your content, and can help you reimagine your story. While there are intentional limitations to maintain design integrity, there are so many different ways to customize each layout beyond the default settings.

In this series, we’re highlighting your favorite slide templates, and challenging you to try something new. For each Smart Slide, we’ll showcase different ways to style and format it to help inspire a new way to tell your story. 

Headline slide

Your presentation is a visual story. Big chunks of text aren’t going to get your information across to your audience. A smart, well-chosen mix of design elements will break up your content, highlight the most important parts, and leave a lasting impression on the viewer.

Headline templates are essential to keeping your presentation organized. Essentially, they’re titles for the different sections of your content. A headline template tells your audience what they can expect next in your presentation, but can also bring attention to key points.

You can customize Beautiful.ai’s headline presentation template to make long blocks of text more engaging and readable, group sections of information into organized chunks, or call out big data or important information in an impactful way. 

Headline slide design tips

A headline slide can work wonders for your presentation, but it can also add unnecessary slides to a deck if you aren’t intentional with how you use it. Here are five ways you can design your headline slide for the most impact. 

Big, bold text as a section break

A section break is the most common use for a headline slide. By using a headline slide to separate different topics throughout the presentation, you’re ensuring your audience is engaged and focused on what’s coming next. To use a headline slide as a section break, you might try big, bold text that grabs the attention of your audience. This can be a quote, a piece of big data, or a buzz-worthy headline to transition to what’s next. 

Add a supporting visual in a sidebar 

For a more engaging design, you can opt for a sidebar on either side of your headline. The sidebar is fully customizable, and can house video, image(s), text, or a combination of all three. By adding a sidebar with a supporting visual, you’re giving yourself more creative freedom to create an eye-catching headline slide.

A quote with a headshot

Do you have an important quote to share? This could be a motivational quote from the company’s CEO, a glowing review from a customer, or a famous quote that deserves the spotlight. You can give the quote the attention it deserves by using big text and a high-quality headshot. This works as a nice alternative to our quotation Smart Slide template.

Create dimension with a background image

A headline slide can fall flat if you rely simply on text. To keep your audience engaged, you can take more creative control of the slide background. To add some dimension to the slide, you might try an image, textured, or gradient background. Just make sure you keep legibility in mind so your slide doesn’t go from boring to cluttered. 

Bring it to life with a background video

While images make a statement, you can really bring your headline slide to life with a background image. The subtle movement creates visual interest that keeps the viewer engaged and focused as you move through the rest of your presentation. It’s a great way to reengage the audience halfway through where they may have lost steam, or pique their interest for what’s to come.