How to Design Video Pin in Adobe Express from PowerPoint & Post to Pinterest

Summary
We’re going to design video pin in Adobe Express using PowerPoint template, and post it to Pinterest. So, we’ll use 3 tools here – 2 design tools, PowerPoint and Adobe Express, while the third, Pinterest, is a social media platform. Doing this is interesting, because it shows that in the world of designing, it would be rare to limit your work to just one or 2 tools. More on this soon.

It’s a long post, but you can skip to specific subject(s) under the Main Topics below.

Introduction

All major design tools with few exceptions if any are modeled on structures of their own. That means, when they ramp up with more features to keep up with new trends and needs, they remain aligned to their basic structures, so as not to upset millions of users with unexpected changes.

To give an example, you cannot expect features you love in PowerPoint to be available in Adobe Express or Canva, and vice-versa. That is why there is always a need-based space for trying out different tools. Because more often than not, sheer necessity demands that… in order to use any tool as and when required.

For a long time I’ve been using Canva, PowerPoint and Camtasia Studio to design video pin and animated ads, and recently I started using Adobe Express to add to my design tools. And it’s a wonderful experience so far.

In this post I’ll explain how to use an animated PowerPoint template in Adobe Express to design a video pin and post it to Pinterest.

But first, why do I use a PowerPoint template in Adobe Express? Let me start with that, and then proceed with the main topic.

Let’s begin.

Why use PowerPoint in Adobe Express

Nearly all our display ads have 2 essential features:

1/
4-5 product images come in animated sequence one after the other, and

2/
the ad copy is housed on top of them usually on a cutout shape.

As an example, watch the 336×280 pixels animated ad below. It displays designer men’s watches, and is good for Google ads.

The advantage here is that a single video ad displays 4-5 products (with attention-grabbing animation) instead of a single product. This reduces ‘per-product’ ad design cost which is helpful for advertisers.

With that in mind I usually start with PowerPoint when designing a new display ad.

For 3 reasons:

1/
It’s easy to create cutout shapes in PowerPoint. To my knowledge this is not possible in Adobe Express.

2/
After an ad is designed, the PowerPoint template can be exported to Adobe Express even though embedded fonts and groups may not work sometimes when transferred.

3/
The 3rd reason is the unique range of animations and transitions that PowerPoint offers. You can even render multiple animations to a single object and manage their duration in milliseconds. PowerPoint animations though won’t work in Adobe Express when transferred.

Adobe Express features you’ll need

A tool as vast and elaborate as Adobe Express will naturally have scores of features. But let’s look at some crucial ones from the viewpoint of designing video pin or an animated ad as above, and posting it on Pinterest.

What to design – Decide in 10 seconds

To be fast is not always a good idea, especially when designing something. But when you know what the design is for, should you keep loosing precious time on how to go about? Certainly not!

Adobe Express takes you to the pre-sized templates you want.. fast and easy. All you do is, click on the tab Social media, and you are immediately taken to different options any of which you can choose.

Click on Pinterest, and you get to see the different formats available, along with their sizes. You can even select a custom size.

Quick actions

Suppose at some point you simply want to make a GIF from a video, or resize a video (as in PowerPoint), or remove background from images.

All of these are unavoidable needs you’ll often face when designing. Adobe Express makes the sub-tools easy to find, easy to use.

Just scroll down the homepage, and under Suggested Quick actions, click on View all.

Here’s a small list of what you can do:

✓ Remove background (of an image)
✓ Convert to GIF (from a video)
✓ Resize image
✓ Resize / Trim / Crop video
✓ Merge videos, and more!

Schedule posting to social media

This is really cool. It’s true many design tools have this feature for scheduling social media posts. But they are lightweight when compared to the vast expanse of Adobe Express.

One can compare with Canva for this feature. And Canva does connect to social media platforms directly for posting.

However, you might argue that Adobe Express is better for calendar-based advanced scheduling, or for that matter, having a place to store draft posts before they’re taken to schedules for posting.

Animations, Transitions, Layers, Timeline

Though I’ve clubbed them under one heading, each of these is a must for any video related work including animations. Adobe Express provides all of these, and it’s not difficult to use them.

You’ll find me using three of them in the how-to video coming later in this post.

Media stocks for use

At the present time, no design tool can afford not to provide readily usable media stocks, and you’ll find them in Adobe Express as well, like photos, videos, audio loops and more.

One point needs special mention.

AE provides what it says acoustics which you may find only in a handful tools with ‘similar’ features. I’ve in fact used a few media files in some how-to videos including background score.

What if you want ready templates

Good news here! Adobe Express gives you ready-to-use templates to design Pinterest pins and more. Let’s look at a couple of options you’ll love to use.

Create & post Pinterest pin

I love ready templates, which is what I create and sell for my living. And if you’re like me, go to this Adobe Express page to create custom animated pins for your Pinterest boards.

Start by selecting the ideal pins you wish to customize using free filters, fonts, and more.

Here is a brief illustrative demo below.

Editable Slide backgrounds

If you would rather prefer slide decks (usually 16:9) for some presentation or pitching an idea, Adobe Express covers you there too. With the help of editable slide background templates you can easily create your own designs in no time.

There is more.

Suppose you want to design a banner, or a stylish infographic, or perhaps a collage of selected photos, or just a certificate for achievement of assorted sizes, you can do all of those and even more with ready available slide background templates.

Getting started

Let’s now get started to design the video pin in Adobe Express after importing a PowerPoint display ad template, and finally exporting it to Pinterest.

I’ve attempted to break down the whole work in easily digestible steps. I’ll be making a 9:16 video pin as Pinterest recommends 1:1, 2:3, 4:5 or 9:16 aspect ratios for making videos (for ads) since those are standard width video ads that are the same size as a regular Pin.

Okay, let’s proceed. You can also skip to the how-to video down below to watch all the 6 steps.

Step 1 – Import PowerPoint to Adobe Express

• Click on the big blue ‘+‘ icon on the left sidebar.
• Click on Upload media, Adobe Express accepts the PowerPoint template, and converts the slides into pages.
• When it’s ready, Open the pages in Adobe Express.
• Out of 5 pages, keep only the first page, and delete the rest. You won’t them for making video pin.
• Next, Resize the single page by choosing Instagram Story for 1080×1920 pixels.

Step 2 – Change cutout shape color & fonts

• Select the cutout shape, and Unlock the Group twice to free the page and its components.
• Now, select the cutout Shape and click on Fill to change its color as you want.
• To change the fonts, select respective Text. The default font is Calibri.
• Let’s change smaller texts to Lato, and the main ad copy, Seasonal Sale, to Westgate.
• You can of course change the entire ad copy to suit your requirements.

Step 3 – Increase number of scene & adjust duration

• From Page actions menu at bottom right, select Edit timeline.
• On the Timeline, the lone Scene appears. Duplicate it to have total 4 scenes.
• Notice the small + (Plus) icon between scenes, meaning they seamlessly continue one to the next when played.
• Make the duration of the first Scene to be 0.9 seconds.
• The other 3 scenes will last for 1.8 seconds each. Total duration of the video pin will be 6.3 seconds.

Step 4 – Change & arrange images in Layers

• While on first Scene, open the Layers by toggling the icon top right.
• To replace an image, select it in Layers, then go to Media on left panel on click on it.
• Under Photos click the link View all, now mention the item you want in Search Photos.
• Let me search for pottery. Remember you can click on Upload from device to use your image(s).
• In the pottery images that come up, select one of them, and drag it on to the Page for replacement.
• To reorder images, simply drag them up or down in the Layers section.
• So, finally, in the 4 scenes, there will be image #1, images #2, #1, images #3, #2, and images #1, #3 in that order.

Step 5 – Animate the images

• There will no animation in the first scene.
• Image #2 will be animated in 2nd scene, image #3 will be animated in 3rd scene, and image #1 in 4th scene.
• To animate an image, select it in Layers, and on left-side pane, go to Animation.
• Clicking on it yields lots of options, let’s select Drift, and click on it.
• For this animation, you can select its Duration, Direction, and Personality.
• Let’s choose 1.5sec for duration, Energetic for personality, and ‘left to right’ for direction.
• Repeat the same for the other scenes as mentioned at the second point above.
• Click the Play button at the side of timeline to view everything is working.

Step 6 – Post Video Pin to Pinterest

• Clicking the blue Share button brings up various options to choose from.
• Under Social Media select Pinterest.
• The dialog box now opens to fill in details for posting to Pinterest.
• Use Generative AI for the video pin description.
• Under Options for Pinterest, select the Board, write a Title for the pin, and mention the URL.
• Finally, to post it, you can do it instantly, or schedule it in the calendar that Adobe Express provides.

Watch the Video Tutorial

So, that’s nearly all about the detailed steps to follow for using PowerPoint template in Adobe Express, design it there with cool animations, and then post it to Pinterest as a video pin.

The video below shows all of that. For narration I’ve used AI voiceover with US accent.

Takeaway

This post covers a wide gamut of choices involving 3 different tools. It gives you some idea about how you can use these tools for various needs for your business or career.

In case PowerPoint is your forte, find out 15 cool features for creating PPT video ads.

Visit our Patreon store that has a lot to offer you in terms of ready-to-use animated templates in Canva & PowerPoint (Adobe Express coming shortly).

You can easily customize them for ad platforms or for social media as you want. And you get commercial license too for the templates.

See you there.