How to Create a Great Presentation
with AI in Tome

None of us wants to waste time and all of us wish we had more of it. Especially when it comes to work and making compelling presentations. Building clear, concise narratives in this once-traditional format is easier, visually elegant and efficient in Tome. You might be thinking—Heard. Now prove it.

Tome’s intelligent digital canvas, including our growing template gallery, gives you new and limitless ways to express your thoughts. Already have your topic in mind but want to explore it even further? Or you’re starting from scratch and need thought-starter inspiration to get the presentation going?

Here are three ways to get started making compelling presentations in Tome, along with some of our top design tips to give your presentation polish and impact.

1. Explore further with Create page about…

Leveraging page generation is best for when you have a crystal clear sense of your presentation’s subject but could use additional information and contextual background. Or you’re seeking to go deeper into specific topics that support your presentation’s main point. Here’s how to give this AI tool a whirl.

• Log in to Tome and click Create in the upper right of your screen.
• At the bottom of your workspace, click into the empty command bar and select Create page about… to get started. Type a prompt into the command bar. You can go broad or get as specific and detailed as you’d like in writing prompts.
• You’ll get four pages with different layout options to choose from, each with a different approach to your presentation topic.
• None of those page options feel right? Simply hit the Retry button to get four fresh pages with four new layouts. Rinse and repeat until you get what works best. It takes seconds.
• Consider our tips on writing prompts for page generation where it's possible to get even more precise page variations like mood boards, sales pitches and one-page websites.

Don’t worry about losing any of these pages either. Search your AI page generation history by tapping the Clock icon to see the last five page prompts you wrote. You can also take any of the pages you’ve received from previous prompts and add them to your presentation as you build on your narrative. Play and see what happens.

2. Experiment with Create a presentation about…

If your ideas feel amorphous and not crystallized, that’s okay. When you don’t know where to start, using Tome’s AI to create a presentation gives you ample opportunity for refining your ideas beginning with the outline. Say you’re a founder kicking off your first winter footwear collection and need ideas on how to pitch your debut product line for your presentation. Here’s how it works.

• At the bottom of your workspace, select Create a presentation about… and type in a prompt into the command bar.
• Let's give this one a spin: Create a product sales pitch about technologically innovative winter footwear. Hit return and Tome's AI will generate an outline in seconds.

• From here, refine using the outline editor where you can manually customize sections, topics and re-order to get your product line pitch perfect. Just drag and drop with your cursor.
• You can also manually adjust how short or long you’d like your presentation to be using the Length indicator field. Say you’re in the mood for six pages, or maybe 11 is better? Simply drag the indicator to the number you want.
• Click the Continue button and watch as Tome’s AI generates a complete presentation in the length you requested.
• From there, you can customize, re-order and re-organize the presentation’s pages and content by dragging and dropping. Want to start fresh? Tap the Regenerate button for more presentation options.

3. Customize with the tile selector

It's key to think of Tome's AI as your teammate and a thought-partner. As you’ve discovered, shaping and getting starter ideas for your presentation using prompts is seamless and fast, but that's only the beginning.

In order to build the proper foundation, narrative and final touches, manually editing and refining is still very much a part of the Tome creation process. Customizing those key elements in your presentation—text, images, layouts and more… it starts with the tile selector. Let’s take a tour.

• To the right of your workspace, note the vertically oriented + icon, the Record icon and the palette icon at the bottom of the column. This is the tile selector. Think of it as a remote control for your tome.

• Clicking the + icon at the top of the tile selector opens up a menu of options where you can drag and drop tiles—text, images, video, Giphys, embed website pages, integration tiles featuring Figma, Airtable and Miro—into your workspace to help you add depth and context. You can change font colors, sizes and more.
• In the middle of the tile selector is the Record icon, a video and audio feature that adds a bite-sized video of yourself in the page of your tome so you can talk through your presentation points. Nobody likes having to parse an eye-chart of too much content on a page. The Record narration feature solves this problem.
• Last but not least, the palette icon lets you customize the look/feel and color of your presentation. There is a robust menu of visual themes to choose from that you can experiment with. Apply to your entire tome or just to specific pages.

Hint: For a behind-the-scenes deep dive on color and custom themes, check out our tome from the Product Design team.

Tome designers share pro tips

So now you know how to ideate, create and customize your tomes, let’s dive even deeper into design. Since Tome is an inherently visual and totally new way to shape ideas and tell stories, we tapped our team of designers for their advice on how best to polish your tomes, and create impactful work that resonates with an audience.

Text

• Write text by either clicking directly into your workspace, or remember to use the tile selector by tapping on the + icon on the right side of your screen. Drag the Text tile from the tile selector, drop it into your page, and start writing.
• Keep your words on the shorter side when you can. Concise, punchy headlines that convey a single point, followed by smaller supporting text (sub headlines) work best.
• Don’t go too big. It can be temping to use large-sized fonts and typefaces for all of your words, but that can sometimes overwhelm and even confuse your reader.
• Try using headers as page titles. Consider using them as large blocks for testimonial quotes or statements you'd like to emphasize.
• Longer paragraphs can make it more difficult for readers to follow your content. Try to avoid paragraphs that run the entire width of the page.

Color

• Remember to click the palette icon in the tile selector to access the ability to customize colors and themes for either your entire tome, or select pages within your tome.
• Similar to choosing paint color for an interior space, neutrals are best for the background of your presentations. This allows your content to shine on its own.
• If you’d like to integrate more color, consider applying some as an accent in the text color or incorporate imagery, such as photography, illustration, or an AI-generated image.

Page design

• Try dragging and dropping individual text tiles separately onto your page, instead of using a single tile to write all your copy. This gives you more layout flexibility.
• Experiment with aligning multiple text tiles horizontally for additional layout versatility.
• You can manually adjust the height and width of text or media tiles by placing your cursor along the borders to resize. When using a Table tile, keep columns to about 40 max for readability.
• Ensure all bullet points or line items are similar in length, so it looks and feels consistent.
  • What do you think... did we follow our own advice? 😉

We hope you bookmark the Tome blog for more tips and product feature overviews like this one. For more spotlights on interesting people making new things with Tome, bookmark our Community page.

As always, we love hearing from you. Drop us a line at team@tome.app.