7+ Creative Timeline Designs plus Tips and Examples

Why do we need Timeline Templates?

In a professional presentation, timeline templates are one of the most powerful visualization tools for showcasing information about the project or product roadmaps, their schedules, the sequence of business processes, or planned strategy. Timeline Infographics are also useful in effectively presenting calendars, timetables, or workflows for the project team in an effective and succinct manner.

Essentially, timeline templates help visualize and simplify complex information.

However, to create an engaging professional timeline design in any of the office tools is a tedious process.

That’s where timeline templates come in very handy wherein you can choose from the predesigned collection of timeline examples. You download any of the professional timeline templates which suit your business needs and simply edit them in the manner you want.

Depending on the goal of your presentation, here are different creative timeline templates examples:

1. Creative Timeline Template To Showcase Business Strategy And Milestones

Timeline PowerPoint

View timeline Design

This Timeline Template is very useful in tracking year-on-year progress for an organization. It also helps consolidate and represent the progress of any multi-year project in a colorful, eye-catching manner. The yearly agenda could be listed next to the respective year, and the various developments on those plans could be represented on the customizable progress bars, in the correspondingly color-coded text using the attached text boxes.

Using different colors, this timeline example shows the different milestones achieved annually, over the years, and how the various steps and initiatives are taken every year have so far, or will allow the business to flourish. Creatively showcasing the cumulative progress over a long period, this timeline design highlights how you have taken big strides forward and come closer to achieving your key goal.

2. Creative Use Of Steps To Showcase Timeline Design

History Timeline Template

View history timeline 

Another creative timeline template well suited for business strategy presentations that can really be used just as well for a monthly, weekly, or even daily timeline for very short-term projects. This one revolves around a simple, clean interface, connecting years/months/weeks/days one after the other, carrying forward the progress that has been made over every individual period. The text below every title can be used to fill the audience in with details like financial metrics, milestones achieved, and progress made in each period.

3. Use Of Animated Timeline To Showcase Your Milestones

Animated PowerPoint Templates make your presentation interactive and eye-catching. These templates use creative infographics, bright colors, and creative animation to set your raw and boring chunks of data into motion, making your presentation compelling to the audience.

Animated PowerPoint Template

View Animated Timeline

Animated Roadmap Presentation

View Animated Roadmap

This template PPT below can help you showcase yearly key highlights of your business or organization through its creative animation. The innovative graphics and smooth animation make this timeline attention-grabbing and easy to understand.

4. Use Of Map And Horizontal Structure To Showcase Horizontal Timeline Infographic

Powerpoint Timeline Template

View Yearly Timeline Design
If your organization is the kind that trots the globe over regular periods of time, or if you are simply looking to expand your business worldwide and want to present that plan over a timeline, look no further. The customizable graphic labels and year-on-year plan at the bottom can be creatively used to convey the plan for the road ahead, in a coherent, comprehensive manner. This can also edit the colors, font size, and icons as per the needs of your brand. Top infographics creation services use this method to communicate the intended message effectively.

5. Creative Representation Of Numbers Using Timeline Infographic

Financial Timeline Template

View Financial timeline Design

Numbers are often presented in a boring and dull format building a monotonous identity in a business presentation. Using this visually appealing PowerPoint timeline template, you can showcase company finances, business highlights, and important milestones in a timeline effectively.

6. Use Of Vertical Layout To Showcase Vertical Timeline

Vertical Timeline Template

View vertical timeline Design
This rather useful vertical timeline template is useful to help make schedules, plans, or organize workflow in a professional space, literally down the line. Relevant vectors or Clip Arts, their PowerPoint, can be used with colorful boxes in order to allow your audience to easily track the points being made in a logical flow. This can also function as a creative template depending on whether you want to use the various titles available chronologically or in sequences that need not be linear, but make the content feel more coherent.

7. Use Of Roadmap Infographic To Build Roadmap Timeline Template

Powerpoint Timeline Graphic

View Horizontal timeline graphic

Speaking of the road ahead, this business roadmap timeline template is exactly what you need if you are looking to both creatively and clearly state, like the name says, the roadmap for your business in the time to come. You can also use this template to introduce the team to a fresh work plan for a new project. This timeline template makes sure clarity of expression is high in priority, using the graphic of a road to clearly demarcate that you mean business. It logically places the waypoint pins one after the other at increasing distances, making sure that the audience can follow the order of the steps to be taken or targets to be finished, well, down the road.

The closer waypoints can mean matters that require immediate attention, targets to be completed in the immediate future, or goals that need to be achieved sooner rather than later. As you move further along the road, it is clear that those waypoints in the timeline PowerPoint indicate goals meant for a later point in the future. The text allows a short description to make things clear, and color codes every waypoint like a milestone with the text. The color scheme used in this timeline design can also be extended to further slides later on in the presentation, to make everything look seamlessly connected.

8. Creative Horizontal Timeline Template Using Pictures

Timeline PPT

View Picture timeline Design

This calendar-like implementation of a simple timeline PPT template is rather sober and definitely easy to follow. If you’re looking to effectively convey your plan for the coming projects or highlight progress over the past few years, without raising a lot of eyebrows, this is the choice to go with. Using a familiar, toned-down interface showing the monthly progress/work plan throughout the duration of the project you can add relevant images alongside every year to amplify the various points you would be made using the short description space available for every entry in the template.

Pictures, when used the right way,  are instrumental in making a mark in your audience’s mind, by not allowing them to disengage from the text and helping them retain and recollect details from a presentation using the reference point of a single image. This timeline graphic is preset to provide you with that functionality and the chance to create an impact with it.

Timeline Isometric

View timeline Isometric Design

View 100+ timeline Examples

FREE POWERPOINT TIMELINE TEMPLATE

Free Timeline Template

View free timeline Design 

This free timeline template says no more than absolutely required. It uses an annual timeline format that can be easily customized to fit your own and uses a simple graphic that tells your audience that the only way ahead is upward. It highlights progress made, or to be made over each year, using appropriate, relevant vector artwork and graphics, accompanied by short text fields summarizing the corresponding goals to be achieved, or the milestones already accomplished.

If you want to make a timeline yourself, check out this step-by-step tutorial on how to create a timeline in PowerPoint.

Timelines are not just helpful for creating and achieving milestones in a particular project; they can help create the overall roadmap for your business.

Summary

In short, timeline templates are pretty useful in expressing the goals ahead or the achievements of the past, in a very coherent and crisp manner, without taking much of anybody’s time. Use them to create engaging presentations. You can check out the 100+ creative ways of presenting timelines. In addition, if you want a quick tutorial, please refer to our blog on how to make a timeline in PowerPoint.