The three levels are strictly ordered, and inheritance only runs downward. The master sets defaults for every layout attached to it. Each layout inherits from the master and may override any of it. Each slide is created from one layout, inherits that layout's placeholders and formatting, and may override any of it locally.
What belongs at each of the three levels?
What lives at each level follows from what changes together.
| Level | What belongs there | The test |
|---|---|---|
| Master | Theme colours and fonts, the background, the outer margin, the footer strip, the logo position, the default text ranks | Would you want this on every slide in the deck, without exception? |
| Layout | The arrangement of placeholders for one recurring slide role, and any deviation from the master that the whole role shares | Does this recur often enough to have a name, and does the arrangement differ from other roles? |
| Slide | Content, and only content: the words, the numbers, the chart, the image | Is this true of this slide alone? |
The rule for choosing is a question about repetition, and it fits in one line: put a decision at the highest level where it is still true of everything below it. Take a logo that appears on every slide but the title slide. It belongs on the layouts, because it isn't true of everything below the master. A body-text colour that's the same everywhere belongs on the master. The revenue figure for Q2 belongs on the slide. If you catch yourself wanting to store a number anywhere else, something has gone wrong with the storage question.
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What goes wrong when a decision sits at the wrong level?
Get the level wrong and you'll hit one of two failures. They feel completely different from the inside.
Store a decision too low and you get drift. The eleven slides built in March carry the March version of the header, and the nine built in June carry the June version. Nobody notices until the deck is projected and the header jumps four pixels every time the slide changes. Nothing in the file is broken. The deck just reads as though several people who weren't talking to each other made it, and that's what happened.
Store a decision too high and you get fights. A logo pushed onto the master appears on the title slide, where it collides with the big brand lock-up, so somebody covers it with a white rectangle. That rectangle is now a permanent object on one slide. It'll get copied forward and forgotten, and one day it'll sit on top of a chart. Almost every white rectangle in a corporate deck is a fossil of a decision stored one level too high.
How do you repair a decision stored at the wrong level?
For a too-high decision, the repair is to move it down to the layouts that want it. The repair for a too-low decision is Reset, which the Replace Fonts section covers. Neither repair is hard. The skill is working out which one you've got.