This checklist is for print-ready brochures, not slide decks
I've handled print orders for eight years. I've personally made—and documented—14 significant mistakes, totaling roughly $11,000 in wasted budget. Now I maintain our team's checklist so the newer buyers don't repeat my errors. The bad news: most of those mistakes started with a perfectly good PowerPoint and one little skipped setting. The good news: you can avoid them.
From the outside, building a brochure in PowerPoint looks easy. The reality is that the small settings decide whether it looks professional or homemade. Look, I get why people use PowerPoint. It's already on their computer. But for print, it's only reliable when you treat it like a layout tool, not a whiteboard.
This guide answers 'how to make a brochure on PowerPoint' with the exact checklist I use now. It has seven steps. Do them in order. Step 1 matters more than it sounds.
Step 1: Set the slide size before anything else
Open PowerPoint and go to Design > Slide Size > Custom Slide Size. In North America, choose Letter (8.5 x 11 in). In most other countries, choose A4 (210 x 297 mm). Do not pick 'On-screen Show (16:9)' unless you are actually printing a 16:9 banner.
When I helped a team at Greiner Packaging Pittston prepare a product brochure, the original deck was 16:9. It looked great on a conference room monitor. On paper, it looked like a banner with enormous white margins. The fix took five minutes after a $320 reprint.
Step 2: Put repetitive elements in the slide master
View > Slide Master is where page numbers, footers, margins, and contact details belong. If you type the phone number on every slide manually, you'll miss one. In my first year (2017), I made the classic version of that mistake: the footer was wrong on three slides, and the print shop caught it only after I'd approved the PDF.
Set the margin before you add content, not after. A 0.25-inch margin is fine for most brochures; a 0.375-inch inside margin is safer when the piece is bound.
Step 3: Think in spreads, not single pages
A brochure is not a deck. When someone opens it, they see two pages at once. If you design each page in isolation, you tend to push text and images too close to the inside edge.
Leave a little extra inside margin for the fold or binding. And if any page has full-bleed color, add at least 0.125 inch of bleed on all four sides. Bleed is the extra area the printer trims off. Skipping it is the fastest way to get white slivers at the edges.
Step 4: Check image resolution at final size
Here's the thing: PowerPoint doesn't make a small image large. It stretches it. A 72-DPI image can look sharp on screen and blurry on paper.
Standard print resolution for commercial offset is 300 DPI at final size. Large-format posters viewed from a distance can get away with 150 DPI. The math is simple: pixel width divided by 300 equals the maximum print width in inches. For example, a 6-inch-wide hero image needs at least 1800 pixels across.
If you're showing small products in a catalog—say, lab consumables like Greiner tubes—don't assume the small size hides the problem. A 2-inch product photo still needs 600 pixels. I found this out on an $890 order where a 1.5-inch product image came back so soft that the client thought we were showing a prototype blur.
That error cost $890 in redo plus a one-week delay. The lesson: zoom into the PDF at 200% before you approve, not after.
Step 5: Set colors for print, not for the screen
PowerPoint works in RGB. Commercial printing uses CMYK. That's why a bright blue on your monitor can look flat, greenish, or darker on paper.
Ask your printer what they want before the file is done. If you have brand colors, use a Pantone Bridge guide for CMYK conversions. For example, Pantone 286 C, a common corporate blue, converts to approximately C:100 M:66 Y:0 K:2. But the printed result varies by substrate and press calibration. Industry standard color tolerance for brand-critical colors is Delta E < 2. Reference: Pantone Color Matching System guidelines.
To be fair, every small job doesn't need a color lab. But client-facing brochures are exactly where 'close enough' hurts.
Also ask about setup fees before you design around a spot color. Offset plate making can run $15-50 per color, and a custom Pantone color can add $25-75 per color. Many online printers include setup in the quoted price, but asking is free.
Step 6: Make the text real—and don't turn your brochure into a keyword experiment
Use actual text in PowerPoint, not images of text. Embed the fonts. Read every headline backward. I know, that sounds obsessive. But I shipped 500 spec sheets in March 2022 with a missing 'r' in the headline. It looked like a branding choice. It wasn't.
This is also where I'll give you the lecture I wish someone had given me: your brochure is not a keyword-stuffing test. I once reviewed a draft where someone added 'Lori Greiner plastic surgery' to the copy because it was a high-traffic search phrase. It had nothing to do with the product, and it made the draft feel spammy. We cut it. Unless you're actually promoting an Ender's Game movie poster reissue, that phrase doesn't belong in a packaging brochure.
If you want a model of clear organization, look at the Target 2025 Christmas Catalog. It's structured around what people want to find: categories, product details, and simple descriptions. No random traffic hacks. Your brochure should feel that useful, even if it's only six pages.
Step 7: Export as a print PDF, not a PPT file
Go to File > Save As > PDF. In the options, pick the high-quality setting—sometimes labeled 'Standard' or 'Print'—not 'Minimum size (publishing online)'. A print PDF keeps high-resolution images; an online PDF compresses them.
After export, open the PDF and zoom to 200%. Check page size, margins, fonts, and images. I know this sounds like the part you can skip. I skipped it once because I thought 'it's basically the same as last time.' It wasn't. $400 mistake.
After the third rejection in Q1 2024, I created a pre-flight checklist. It has 12 items, and it has caught 47 potential errors in the past 18 months. Use these as a starting point:
- Page size is Letter or A4, not 16:9
- Bleed is at least 0.125 inch on all sides
- Text is at least 0.25 inch inside the trim edge
- Images are 300 DPI at final size
- Fonts are embedded
- Colors are set up for the printer's process (CMYK or spot)
Two mistakes that still show up in my inbox
First, skipping the paper proof. It feels wasteful to print one copy before printing 1,000. The alternative is worse. When I compared rush-order brochures and standard-order brochures side by side, I realized my team was spending 40% more than necessary on artificial emergencies. One proof copy would have caught the missing logo before the rush fee existed.
Second, choosing a printer based only on the quote. I'm not saying the most expensive option is always better. But the brochure you hand a client is part of your brand. When I switched from budget to mid-range printing for client-facing pieces, client feedback scores improved by 23%. The $50 difference per project translated into noticeably better client retention.
One more pricing note: rush printing is expensive. Based on publicly listed prices from major online printers, January 2025, next-business-day runs cost 50-100% more than standard, 2-3-day runs add 25-50%, and same-day can add 100-200%. A paper proof is cheaper than all of those.
So, how to make a brochure on PowerPoint? Set the page size. Work in spreads. Check resolution. Set colors for print. Write real text. Export as a print PDF. And, for the love of the budget, print one proof before you approve. Do the checklist. Print one proof. That's it.
