How to Make a Captivate Template (Free Sample Included)

The sample BasicBlueTemplate is available here. You are free to use it for any purpose, modify it, etc.

Creating the most effective Captivate eLearning module can present a significant challenge. In addition to defining the learning challenge and building the interactions, you’ve got to figure out what the core aesthetic will be. Whether you’re trying to create the perfect branding solution for your institution or just trying to customize the look and feel of this new module, it can be incredibly helpful to put the fundamental elements into a template.

It’s a great way to build on a design aesthetic – and visualize what your project will be like. You can get some fast general tips on layout and composition solutions from this short video:

You can glean inspiration from all around you. Sometimes the project itself determines the colors and style – especially when you need to comply with standards at your company. If your institution shares powerpoint templates, don’t be afraid to use them as your visual guide.

Once you have a good looking and useful slide, its time to save it into a template. The advantage is that you can use the slide as a kind of model, and then just add content time and time again.

To create Follow these basic steps:

1 Open Adobe Captivate and choose Project Template from the launch screen.

2 Select an appropriate size for your project. (800×600 is generally a good choice.)

3 Choose Window: Master slide from the menu.

4 If you want to use a single solid color for the background of all your slides, open Edit: Preferences. Choose Global Defaults. Click the Background Color Chip to define a base background color. Select OK to close the Preferences dialog.

5 You can override that background color by selecting the properties inspector (on the right side) and unticking the Project Background setting. You are then free to either import a graphic (using the browse folder) or change the color using the color chip.

6 The most common slide template designs are:

Blank

Title

Content

Unit Separator

2 Column Content

To create these five template slides, you’ll need to make four additional Master slides. (Captivate already provides you with a blank.) To make a new master slide, right click on the blank master slide and select Insert Master slide (or if you prefer shortcuts (CTRL,ALT,m.) Repeat four times.

7 I recommend you add a text caption to the first filmstrip slide for your Title Slide. It will make it the most easily editable. (Check out this BasicBlueTemplateto see what I mean.) Position and size the Caption and adjust its appearance. Any font or caption style properties that you assign in the template will be remembered when the caption is loaded as the template for a new project.

8 (Optional) Teach Captivate to remember your favorite font styles. if you want to share fonts, colors, sizes etc. with a team or just with other projects, defining custom object styles for your captions can be incredibly helpful. If you define them in a template, every project you create based on that template will automatically inherit those custom text & caption styles.

To Create a custom caption style from any caption, simply select the final caption, then in the properties inspector select the Create New Style button. Name the style appropriately (eg. Acme_Title_1.) Try adding a Title caption to Master Slide 2 and then naming the master slide “Title”. You may well find that a simple slightly smaller text caption works well at the top of the final 3 master slides.
You can delete any of the captions once finished to get the customary ‘Placeholder’ image to drop in in place of the actual caption. Want to delete the placeholder? No problem, just select and delete.

9 Either of the content slides might be used to display graphics. You can place a graphic placeholder into the slide by inserting an image placeholder and stretching it to fill the appropriate space. Use Insert: Placeholder Objects: Image to insert an image placeholder.

10 Once you’ve finished, click File:Save to save the template.

As usual, let me know in the comments if you like this sort of thing. Would you like more template samples – more detail about how to make them?