Google Slides TIPS (as of February 2024)

Hello. I am Brewus, a UI designer here. This nickname was given to me by a former boss, and I have fond memories of how it sometimes caused confusion in the team because there were colleagues named "Kassie" and "Lassie," making it unclear who was being called.

I recently had the opportunity to use Google Slides for work, so I spent some time getting to know it.
I felt that the official Google Slides help documentation lacked information, so I wrote this article in the hope that it might contribute something.
I have not mentioned specifications that are obvious at a glance, so please keep that in mind. Also, I have omitted animations this time.

Google Slides default size (Mystery Spec 1)

The size that appears when you create a new slide from scratch is
25.4cm x 14.29cm.
For reference, A4 landscape is 297mm wide by 210mm high.
I wondered why it was such an awkward size, but it seems the default is set to match the 16:9 widescreen standard, which corresponds to common PC screen aspect ratios.

The unit can be changed to pixels from File > Page setup, but for some reason, it reverts to cm when you return to the formatting options, so I gave up and decided to calculate in cm.

Both Keynote and Canva display units in points, so this is a mystery specification.

Grid units (Mystery Spec 2)

The grid unit seems to be 2.1mm (0.21cm).
I verified this, and it was the same for both vertical and horizontal.
However, if you change the slide size, it changes as well.
Moreover, you cannot visualize the grid...
Personally, I felt it might be better not to use the "grid".

Items that should be set first in the Theme Builder

You can create a theme via "View > Theme builder".

Guides

When you "Show guides," a red dotted line appears, which apparently represents the center.
Other guides can be dragged out from the ruler or added via the right-click menu.

Guides added in the main editor cannot be locked, so they can get in the way when transforming objects, and you end up moving them by accident.
However, if you draw them on the theme side, they cannot be deleted, so it is ultimately easier to draw guides in the theme and create the layout first.

You can perform advanced settings, such as changing the color of each guide from the "Edit guides" right-click menu.

Changing theme colors

It is also convenient to set theme colors in advance.
You can set the default text color and link color.

If you select the pencil icon next to the theme title from the fill tool,

"Theme colors" will appear in the right column, and if you change them there, they will be saved.

You can change the link color, but you cannot remove the underline. If you do not want to underline, it is better to write the link text inside a shape and apply the link to the shape.

When you change the color of the list bullet in the theme, the color of the list bullets in the main body will subsequently be set to that color.

Fonts

Being able to use Google Fonts is something I am very grateful for as someone who works with app and web design.
At the end of the day, I feel that Noto Sans JP is the strongest choice.
There is a wide variety of English fonts, so it seems possible to create stylish presentations if they are in English.
The default font is set in the Theme slides of the theme creation tool.

Layout-related

Alignment

While you cannot achieve the same precise alignment as in Adobe software or Figma, it is possible to Snap to guides or Snap to grid. You can select these under
View > Snap to
. When snapping to the grid, you can move objects by 0.21 cm at a time by pressing the arrow keys on your keyboard. *Honestly, I felt this was not very practical.

If snapping to guides, it seems you cannot align them using keyboard operations. Instead, you will notice that objects snap to the guides when you drag them with the mouse. I found this snap function easier to use.

Also, you can center objects on the slide using

Arrange > Center on page.

Distribute evenly

After selecting multiple target objects, perform this via Arrange > Align.

Indenting text partially (e.g., to create text wrapping around images)

Drag to select the text you want to indent, right-click, and select "Format options" to open the "Format options" panel. (This part is also a bit mysterious.)

If you want to indent the selected lines as a whole, simply increase the value for Text fitting > Indent. Increasing the left indent creates space on the left, where you can place icons or illustrations.

If you only want to indent the first line, select Special > First line and increase the value for Width.

Special > Hanging and increasing the width value allows you to indent the second and subsequent lines of a list item.

Copy and Paste

In Google Slides, when you copy and paste, it is pasted in the same location on the slide every time, so you can use this to keep pasting icons or similar items in the same spot.

Shapes-related

Differences in properties between text inside shapes and text boxes (Mystery Specification 3)

Both have properties for padding and vertical/horizontal alignment within the box.
Text boxes have an auto-resize function based on the amount of text, but for text inside shapes, the auto-resize function cannot be used. It is non-negotiable, even for rectangles.
I am looking forward to updates on this.

Specifications for borders

Shape borders are drawn centered on the path, and cannot be changed.
Snapping occurs at the edges of shapes or images, not at the borders.
It is safer to avoid this if you want a pixel-perfect layout.

Cropping an image into a shape

First, insert the image and lay it out to some extent.
Select the image, and select a shape from the pull-down menu to the right of the crop icon to crop it into that shape.

The method of double-clicking to adjust the position of the internal image after cropping is exactly the same as in Figma.

Changing a shape later

Right-click the shape and select "Change shape."
You cannot change a text box into a shape.

Drawing shapes

You can draw shapes in Google Slides.
If you select "Polyline" from the line tool, you can draw a polygon by placing points. It can even be concave. You can draw relatively complex shapes. Returning to the first point closes the path.
Even if you don't return to the first point, it will close, but the border will be cut off.

If you right-click this shape and select "Edit points," you can manipulate anchor points like in Illustrator, but Illustrator-like handles do not appear.

The curve tool can do the same thing.

Freehand drawings cannot be edited. Freehand drawings do not have a fill.

Comparison with Microsoft PowerPoint

Advantages of Google Slides

• It is free for anyone to use, making it easy to share

• Can be integrated with Google tools such as Google Sheets

• There is a wide variety of English fonts in Google Fonts, and they are OS-independent (they display consistently across all OSs as long as you don't use device fonts)

• It is easy to access what is called the "Master" in PowerPoint

  • In Google Slides, it is called a "Theme"

• It does not include strange, tasteless clip art

• It does not include strange layout templates

• There is no strange WordArt

• You can prevent moving to the next slide while scrolling

  • Via Tools > Settings

Disadvantages of Google Slides

• There is no concept of letter spacing

  • I find it questionable that letter-spacing is always the same...

• Ctrl+G does not group objects (grouping uses a different shortcut)

• In PowerPoint, you can check layer stacking, but you cannot in Google Slides

  • Since the order of layers is completely invisible, it's just a guess (lol)

• Objects and guides cannot be locked

• Resolution and document sizes are difficult to understand

  • Units and grids are hard to use

• SVG images cannot be loaded(This is quietly painful. Images end up blurry.)

• Cannot specify numerical values for rounded corner radii

While I have realized that Google Slides is unfortunately quite inferior compared to PowerPoint, Keynote, Canva, or Figma (lol), it still has the strong advantage of being free and shareable with Google users.

Personally, I believe that Google can do even better! and I will wait for that.

Side note: I made the thumbnail for this article using only Google Slides.

Postscript: Points to note when publishing to Speaker Deck from Google Slides

These are the issues I encountered when publishing finished slides on Speaker Deck.

When you export Google Slides directly as a PDF, the width is 720px.
Speaker Deck recommends a width of 1024px or more (up to 1920px supported), and at 720px, it didn't look that strange on the PDF, but it was degraded when published. I remember being disappointed at first because I didn't know it would be published in a degraded state (and it wasn't specifically written as a point of caution).

I tried scaling it up to 1024px, but it still seemed to degrade upon upload, so I ultimately increased the settings to 1920px and, as mentioned earlier, significantly enlarged and replaced the illustrations that I couldn't import as SVGs. Items that were originally large photos that were scaled down seemed to be fine.

As for how to change the slide resolution, you can do it via File > Page setup > Custom > Units in pixels, but you need to be careful because the visual units remain in cm.

If your goal from the start is to publish on Speaker Deck, I wish I had started creating it at a width of 1920px.
If you are thinking about publishing on Speaker Deck, please use this as a reference.