You are preparing a presentation for prospective students of the School of Fine Art.

In PowerPoint, a placeholder is a pre-formatted container on a slide for content (text, graphics, or video). The pre-set formatting makes it easier to format slides consistently.

You format a placeholder in Slide Master view. Then you use the placeholder—add content to it—in Normal view.

The pictured slide has two rectangular placeholders:

The (upper) Title placeholder prompts the user for text and formats it in the default Heading font, size, and color

The (lower) Content placeholder accepts text, or a table, chart, SmartArt graphic, picture, or video, as indicated by the clickable icons at its center.