---
title: "Time to design presentations right in Sketch and convert them to .ppt or .key · Barrel · Jinson Johny"
description: "Summary of Jinson Johny's first Medium post (2018), introducing Barrel Herd: convert a .sketch file into a PowerPoint deck with editable text. Deck grew out of it."
url: https://jinson.me/writing/design-presentations-in-sketch
markdown: https://jinson.me/writing/design-presentations-in-sketch.md
type: Article
author: Jinson Johny (https://jinson.me/#person)
updated: 2026-11-01
---

[Published in **Barrel** · Jan 22, 2018](https://medium.com/barreldotim/time-to-design-presentations-right-in-sketch-and-convert-it-to-a-ppt-bbafdf80ac40)

# Time to design presentations right in Sketch and convert them to .ppt or .key

By [Jinson Johny](https://jinson.me/about.md) · \~3 min read on Barrel

## In short

In his first Medium article, Jinson Johny introduces Barrel Herd, an online tool that converts a .sketch file into a PowerPoint presentation with editable text. He built it after a friend asked for an editable version of slides he had designed in Sketch and exported as images, and found no simple existing solution. The post is now marked outdated in favour of deck.is.

![The Sketch logo, an arrow and the PowerPoint logo, captioned “.sketch to ppt convertor”.](https://jinson.me/images/writing/design-presentations-in-sketch.webp)

Cover image from the original on [Barrel](https://medium.com/barreldotim/time-to-design-presentations-right-in-sketch-and-convert-it-to-a-ppt-bbafdf80ac40)

## Key takeaways

1. **Born from a request.** A friend asked for editable text, and with no simple Sketch-to-PowerPoint solution available, he built one himself.
2. **Text and bitmaps only.** Artboards must be 1920×1080, and only text and bitmap layers carry over; other layers are ignored unless flattened to bitmap.
3. **Drop, name, convert.** Users drop a .sketch file into Barrel Herd, name the file, choose the page and slide alignment, then convert.
4. **Shapes on the roadmap.** The next version planned editable PowerPoint shapes and custom slide sizes.

This is a summary. The full article lives on Barrel, where it was first published.

[Read the full article on Barrel](https://medium.com/barreldotim/time-to-design-presentations-right-in-sketch-and-convert-it-to-a-ppt-bbafdf80ac40)

## Related

[Deck: what Barrel Herd became ](https://jinson.me/products/deck.md)· [Introducing Deck 1.0 · Sketch App Sources, 2020](https://jinson.me/writing/introducing-deck-1-0.md)

---

**About the author.** Jinson Johny is a Dubai-based Design Engineer and Senior Product Designer for Design Systems and Design Ops at IBM iX. He is the creator of Deck (deck.is), a Figma-to-PowerPoint plugin used by 160,000+ designers since 2017, and .gui (dotgui.org), an open file format for user interfaces. Open to design engineering, design systems, DesignOps, AI design and product design roles in the UK (London) and remote. Contact: hello@jinson.me · [Open to work](https://jinson.me/hire.md) · [All pages](https://jinson.me/llms.txt)