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Lesson 8 of 989% of the course

Design a Power BI report page: navigation, title bar, tiles

Use the Layout section of Report Design Studio to lay out a whole report page, from a starter or from scratch, and export it as a PNG background, a layered SVG for Figma or a PowerPoint slide.

Report Design Studio courseAdvanced7 steps4 min
Open Report Design Studio
Video coming soonDesign a Power BI report page: navigation, title bar, tilesUntil then, the lesson below walks through every step.

Many polished Power BI reports sit on a background image: a navigation bar, a title band, soft panels where the visuals go, a subtle gradient. A theme JSON sets the background colour, and can embed at most one image for every page. So the Layout section designs the page for you, in your palette, and exports it for Power BI, Tableau, Figma or PowerPoint.

Open the Layout

Open Layout in Report Design Studio. Its controls are in four tabs: Page, Content, Style and Background. Everything updates in the preview on the right. The Visuals button, with an eye, hides the sample charts so you see just the page, and shows them again.

Start from a starter

Page opens on eight starters, each a whole page in one click: an exec scorecard with a top bar, an analytical deep-dive with a sidebar, an ops monitor with an icon rail, a filter panel, a finance statement and more. Pick the one closest to your report, then change what you need.

A whole page in one click.

Under the starters, Page size sets the page: Power BI 16:9, 4:3 or Letter, the Tableau desktop and laptop sizes, Looker Studio, or Full HD. Use the size your report page has.

Add navigation, a title bar and slicers

Still in Page:

  1. Navigation adds page navigation: an icon rail, a sidebar with page names, a floating sidebar or a top bar, on the left or the right, with its size, colour and how see-through it is
  2. Title bar adds a band for the report title, as a card or only as space on the page
  3. Slicer panel & footer add a column or strip for filters and a line at the bottom for the data source and refresh time

Shape the tiles

Content splits what is left into sections of tiles, the panels your visuals sit in:

  1. Start from a preset (KPIs + grid, split view, table page, and more), or pick rows or columns
  2. Set how many tiles each section has and how tall (or wide) it is
  3. Turn off Equal tiles to make one tile wider than the others, and turn off Cards for visuals that sit on the page itself
  4. Set the page margin and the gap between tiles

Style the tiles

Style sets how the tiles look: corner radius, fill opacity and colour, border, drop shadow, and an accent strip in a palette colour. Match the corners and shadow to what you set for visuals, so the panels and the visuals on them look like one design.

Background sets what is behind everything: Solid, Gradient, Radial, Mesh or Pattern, with its strength and optional grain. Keep it subtle.

Try your visuals on it

Edit visuals above the preview lets you click a tile and choose which visualization it shows, so you can test the real layout of your report. Click it again when you are done. Save the layout under My layouts to reuse it on other reports.

Click a tile, pick its visual.

Export it

  • PNG at 1× or 2×, the page background
  • SVG, and Copy for Figma to paste it straight into Figma, with every zone as a named layer
  • PPTX, one PowerPoint slide with the background as a picture and every zone as a shape you can move

In Power BI Desktop:

  1. Click an empty part of the page
  2. In the Format pane, open Canvas background
  3. Add the PNG as the image, set Image fit to Fit, and set the transparency to 0%

Then place your visuals on the tiles, with a transparent background so the panels show through, and put page navigator buttons on the navigation bar.

The last lesson covers everything you can take away: importing, sharing and all the export formats.

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