Your cousin asks for help on a presentation about wild life in Africa, but you have a deadline the same day with your client and he is already sending emails and trying to get you on instant messenger. Sounds familiar? Designers have to deal every day with “design favors,” asked for by our loved ones, and we don’t always have the time nor the patience to help them. That’s why we need the help of other generous designers who share their work.
Powerpoint presentations are not my field of expertise (kind of hate charts and tables), but there are many sites with lots of nifty templates and backgrounds, as well as tips and tricks to master them. I list here 5 sites which offer lots of free stuff, and some also do custom designs. So they might be helpful to your cousin and even yourself, or maybe you want to suggest them to a client for a more specialized work.

Office Online

Microsoft Templates

When was the last time you browsed the humongous Microsoft site? Well, there’s much more free stuff than the lastest version of IE or DirectX. Try the template section on Microsoft Office Online Portal. You can find lots of high quality templates for the whole office family. And, of course, there are lots of templates divided into categories from Academic to training for Powerpoint, giving plenty of flexibility to your presentations needs.

Presentation Helper

Presentation Helper
As the name suggests, presentation helper is a complete site devoted to helping its users to build presentations. It sports free powerpoint template collections: Business, medical, and design, among others. There are a lot more resources like free clipart, audioclip articles about how to build good presentations and also a forum to exchange knowledge about the topic.

Presentation Tree

Presentation Tree
They have Free Powerpoint templates and backgrounds, as well as some useful clipart. Also, they have clever articles giving Powerpoint Tips, like how to insert videos from YouTube into your presentation and a complete guide to the effective use of fonts.
And if you don’t have the time or the skill to do your own presentation – or maybe you need the actual slides made for you – you can use a Powerpoint Designer Expert to help, and see how your mock up on paper will turn into a catchy presentation. That’s what Expedia and Starbucks, who are among their clients, have done.

Powered Templates

Powered Templates
This site does not have the biggest selection of free templates, but IMHO they have the most attractive free Powerpoint templates out there. And, for a fee, you can have a complete template with pre-made charts and tables. Also, some of them come with a matching complete corporate identity package: brochure, business cards, word templates and fliers.
indezine.jpg
The guys at Indezine add free powerpoint templates every day. Currently, they offer the whopping number of 2587 free templates in every imaginable category: Earthquake, Bible, Headache, Fear – you name it. A big drawback is that they are listed in chronological order you can’t sort them by category. Still, if you are looking for a site with the widest arrange of categories, this is the place to go.
More Powerpoint Template from Snap2objects