Power Point Design

Inserting a movie behind text in PowerPoint

admin — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 14:56:59 +0000

Once in awhile when I get a break from doing PowerPoint presentations for clients, I’ll sit down and do one for myself. Imagine that! No, I’m not a glutton for punishment. It’s just that an idea will pop into my head about a certain effect or animation, and I’ll decide to give it a try. On this particular day, I stumbled across some old black and white Laurel and Hardy clips. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this comedic team, they were known for their zany slapstick humor during the late 1920s to the mid-1940s. Presentations these days are full of high tech images and flashy graphics. Sometimes it’s refreshing to think about visual entertainment and how far we’ve come. So I thought it would be fun to put one of these old clips into a PowerPoint slide, say on the history of the Hollywood movie industry. I titled this first slide “Old Movies” and I thought, the “O” in the word Old has a whole in the middle. Wouldn’t it be neat to put the movie clip inside the hole? But movies are rectangular, are they not? Well, sure, but if the movie is behind the O and the corners are covered up by the letter, then you can actually get rounded corners, just like the old fashioned tv screens from the early days of television. The idea worked like a charm. I got such a kick out of this little exercise that I wanted to share it with others on YouTube. You can click on the link below to view the video.Adding video behind word in PowerPoint

Bringing PowerPoint Charts to Life with Animation

admin — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 15:27:21 +0000

PowerPoint comes equipped with so many chart and graph options that what was once considered graphic “bells and whistles” is now ubiquitous. Just like you would not expect a good PowerPoint design to have an overused and highly recognizable PowerPoint template, you also would not want to see the same old tired charts, unless there was a way to give them new life. That’s where PowerPoint animation comes in. In my opinion, animation is most effective when the movement created has meaning. In other words, it should reinforce whatever concept your graphic is illustrating, such as growth, loss, expansion, etc. For example, in a simple 2D column chart, you can reinforce upward growth by using the “wipe up” entrance effect to have your columns literally draw themselves up from the base. For a horizontal bar chart, you can also use the “wipe” animation, only this time chose “from left” under “effect options” to show growth from left to right. Don’t forget to check out all the options under the Chart Animations dialog box. Here you can indicate whether you’d like the movement to be by series, element, or category. There’s even a use for some of the less conventional effects. For example, a pie chart that bounced would seem silly and meaningless, unless the “pie” represented tennis ball sales in different parts of the country. Now you have a tie in with the subject matter giving the bouncing-ball movement a reason to be there. Some of the effects I would avoid are Exit Effects such as Blinds or Checkerboard. To me, they seem very hokey, and I have yet to run into any instance where these random movements could add value to any PowerPoint presentation.

A PowerPoint Before and After for CES

admin — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 18:29:19 +0000

I recently got a call on a Sunday from a company who had what I would call a PowerPoint emergency. They were scheduled on a flight to the annual Computer Electronics Show (CES) the following day armed with a PowerPoint presentation that reflected poorly on them. The main problems were a follows: a bland PowerPoint template with colors and patterns that did nothing to complement the company branding, poor and bitmapped graphics that were pulled from the web and haphazardly placed, and extraneous bullet points, distracting the reader from key messaging. I agreed to take on the project and recommended a start-up phone call. However, all parties involved were to be on a flight early the next morning. So my direction was simply “make the PowerPoint look more professional.” In other words, fix it and email it to us at the show in Las Vegas. The example below shows some of the typical slides shown before on the left, and new and improved on the right.

PowerPoint support free? You’re kidding, right?

admin — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 15:20:40 +0000

No I’m not kidding, I actually do provide free PowerPoint help to anyone who seriously needs it. It doesn’t matter if you are a client, a prospective client, or someone who is just stuck on something.

In fact, I was honored recently to receive an inquiry for help from Tom Peters. Tom, as many of you know, wrote what is perhaps the most widely read business and management book of the last 30 years: “In Search of Excellence”.
Tom writes and lectures throughout the U.S., and he has an incredibly inspiring set of videos on YouTube. At any rate, Tom Peter’s office contacted me because they had heard that I offer technical support. Although Tom creates all of his own Power Point presentations, it turned out that he wanted to talk to a Power Point designer just to go over a number of long-standing questions. We met over coffee and croissants and over an hour or so I answered a whole series of PowerPoint questions. It was great fun for me and great working together to clear up some questions.

An easy way to improve your charts and graphs

admin — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 14:03:51 +0000

We’ve all sat though PowerPoint presentations with charts and graphs that
look about as creative as Microsoft can make them, in other words, not creative at all. And many people think they do the job just fine. After all, a bar chart is a bar chart, no matter what kind of business you’re creating it for, right? Well, not necessarily. Something like the ubiquitous bar chart can be taken a step further by tying it in to the services you’re selling or the business you’re representing. The chart below was created for a corporate recruiting firm. One could argue that the statistics alone were compelling enough but putting faces behind the numbers helps us to relate on a deeper level. Each face represents success, repeat business and diversity and seeing statistics personified in this way makes them far more memorable.

Janet Bornemann interviewed for Inc. Magazine Power Point design article

admin — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 17:46:10 +0000

Well. . . , the big news here is that I was recently interviewed for an Inc. Magazine article on PowerPoint design. The article came out recently and I was delighted to find that I was quoted throughout the piece, plus, and a big plus, the article featured material about both Steve Jobs and Guy Kawasaki, giants in hi-tech which I am glad to be associated with in any way possible, even if it is only being in the same article.
Since publication I have gotten a number of interesting calls from prospective new clients who have wanted to learn more about my specific Power point design style and overall approach and philosophy. To put it simply, PowerPoint to me is not so much about graphic design (though that is important) but rather it is primarily about communication. When I work on PowerPoint project designs the first thing I focus on is always this: what does my client need to communicate. This creative process helps me build the foundation that the PowerPoint graphic design can build on. Without this, the design is a house of cards. Pretty cards in pretty colors maybe, but a house of cards nonetheless, and it will not serve the client well.
You can check out the article for yourself at the following link:

http://www.inc.com/guides/201102/how-to-create-a-great-powerpoint-presentation.html

Enjoy! As always, let me know your feedback!
Janet

How PowerPoint saved the day, at a potentially contentious town meeting

admin — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 21:09:06 +0000

Today we have a guest post from Bob Gilstein, a Town Planner in Portsmouth RI. In a recent chat with Bob he had discussed how effective PPT has been in helping him present and explain topics to townspeople, something that many town planners engage in on a regular basis. Bob provided some great insights on using PPT in this context. One of the things that really caught my attention is that Bob pointed out that PPT is not only useful in presenting the ideas, but actually helps to keep the meeting flowing in a positive and constructive fashion. We’ve all been to town meetings of the type he describes below, in which an issue is hotly contested by one group of citizens, or by town government. As Bob describes, a carefully crafted Power Point designed presentation can be key to explaining complex concepts and options, and ultimately, maintaining a civil and constructive discourse:

Recently I had to make a presentation to a group of over 200 property owners from a working class neighborhood – with news that most of them would have to spend $15-25,000 on new septic systems. In this economy (2011). One week before, a crowd from the same neighborhood had nearly eaten the presenters alive on a different subject. (Someone actually called the police just in case.) Needless to say, my goal was not popularity.
Experience has taught me that voice alone cannot keep an unruly crowd from becoming unruly. But even the most aggravated people can be orderly if they are presented with order.
As people were filing in, I played a revolving PowerPoint showing pictures of, well, toilet humor (appropriate, no?). This kept them relatively quiet, rather than plotting my demise.
PowerPoint was essential in getting my message across, educating the crowd, and most of all keeping them focused.
The words on the screen contained just a few words on each of the major points I was making as I spoke. One major subject with a few sub-bullets per slide. I never read the words on the screen, just fill in detail and move right along.
As I hoped, it worked! People were engaged; the room was quiet.
Since this had to be a long presentation with lots of information, and since any voice can get boring, we had two other presenters. I worked carefully with them to organize and trim down their slides.
The question-and-answer session afterward was more than civil. People asked good questions, many referred to the slides they had seen, and complimented us on our honesty and forthrightness.
I left the meeting with a smile (and my head).

I have seen PowerPoint work before and done it myself. People learn visually, so it plants information better than voice. It focuses the attention of the audience, keeps them from interrupting, and provides a framework for later discussion.

Bob Gilstein

Inc. Magazine article

admin — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 15:47:31 +0000

An interesting thing happened a few weeks ago. I received an email by one of the writers at Inc. Magazine who wanted to interview me for his upcoming article on Creating Effective PowerPoint presentations. You know what it’s like when you’ve been doing something so long that it’s like falling off a watermelon truck. It becomes easy, and because it’s effortless for you, you think it’s that way for everyone else.
The “secret” to effective presentations is, to me, just common sense. And what can I say about something that is so, well, common. Well, once my interview began with the writer, I was amazed by just how much there was to say about how to make a presentation effective. And I could tell by his response to my comments that he was getting info from me that he didn’t already know. He followed up by asking if he could quote me, and I was surprised to find out that he quoted me not once, but three times. I am not accustomed to seeing my own thoughts in print, but seeing them next to a photo of one of my heroes, Steve Jobs? Now that’s a good thing. Click on the link below for the Inc. Magazine article.

http://www.inc.com/guides/201102/how-to-create-a-great-powerpoint-presentation.html

The Power of PowerPoint templates (and some limitations)

admin — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 15:07:39 +0000

When using standard templates in your PowerPoint designs, it’s important to realize that they are just tools that are provided to give you power over the repetitive slides in your presentation. Sometimes it is easy to view the templates as fixed and unmalleable but they are best viewed simply as another tool to be used as needed.

In other words, templates can guide us in achieving a standardized look and feel for our presentation. They also
establish consistency so that, for example, headlines always appear in the same position on every slide and don’t
jump around as we click from one slide to the next. Those kinds of inconsistencies are jarring and distract us from
the message. Color is also a good reason to use templates in PowerPoint presentations because they help to hold the presentation together like a nicely wrapped package. That said, templates can and should be modified when it’s necessary, for example, to accommodate an extra line of text, a wider picture, or an additional graphic. Every presentation is unique, and many of my clients get frustrated because their template doesn’t “work” for every single presentation option. Clients understandably want to streamline their presentation design process, to maximize productivity. But there is only so much that a template can do. For example, if a Power Point template has been set up with a standard graph design that is used many times, then this template cannot automatically turn into a pie chart without some additional manipulation. With professional Power Point situations like this, I like to ask the client if the new chart need is one-of-a-kind or whether it is likely to recur in future. If it is likely to recur, then this is a good time to create a modified template to easily display this type of data in future.

Power Point design templates should be treated like a living and breathing thing which can be customized and modified as needed to fit the way your content is delivered to the audience.

PowerPoint Presentation Non-Profit Group

admin — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 02:55:06 +0000

I was recently asked to develop a PowerPoint presentation for a
non-profit group that works with school districts across the U.S. in the area of managing budgets, allocating funds and providing quality education for their students. The purpose of the Power Point design I developed was to attract new school districts and persuade them to work with the non-profit. Since the PowerPoint would be given to a group of educators, it made sense to speak to them in a language they could relate to, that is, the language of instruction. Part of my job was to take statistics that analyzed money spent per student, class size and number of hours in the classroom and make it easy to digest. I used a number of techniques such as icons representing the students whose numbers grew in size through a simple animation. Similarly, a line of simple clocks appeared and magically lit up across the page to represent both long and short school days. In addition, motion graphics were applied throughout, for example, a clean schoolhouse graphic became filled with lines of text explaining what contributes to a successful school. As questions were posed in the presentation, hands were raised, literally, with photos of several enthusiastic classroom scenes serving as a backdrop as the “answers” of the questions animated one by one on the screen. . I will be posting a number of these Power Point slides in a future post.

To sum up, whenever you’re doing any powerpoint, consider your audience. When talking to teachers…teach. And always keep things moving. Nobody enjoys sitting through a long stagnant presentation packed with facts and figures. If you feel as though important details are not addressed in the presentation, you can include them in a hard copy hand-out to be read afterward.