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BlogrollA PowerPoint Blog
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April 27, 2008 April, 2008 Background of the Month Charismatic is a template (.pot file, zipped) with a sunburst on the title slide and a sky-blue gradient for the slide master. You can use it in PowerPoint 2002/2003 as well as PowerPoint 2007. Excellent for inspirational topics. April 27, 2008 April, 2008 Resource of the Month - Echo's Voice Echo's Voice- Echo is a PowerPoint MVP and her Web site contains a series of in-depth articles and tutorials that everyone will find useful. Look for her excellent PowerPoint 2007 tutorials. April 27, 2008 Best practices for PowerPoint presentations in Second Life Based on my experience with the grand opening of Virtualis (see my review), the conference center in Second Life, I’ve put together what I believe to be the first set of guidelines for creating and delivering PowerPoint presentations in Second Life. I’ll add to this as I get more experience. 1. Use a plain, white background Forego your usual background and stick to the default white. If you need some decoration, make it bold. Fine lines and detail won’t show up. Decoration should not take up very much space, because of point #2. Here you see an example of two types of slides. It’s obvious that the white background works best.
2. Use very large text 3. Make text and images plain and clear 4. Wait until the image is clear 5. Test your venue Also, if you plan to stand at a podium, can you see both the podium and the screen at the same time? Remember, in real life, it’s easy for people to turn their head; in Second Life, they have to press keyboard buttons, or click onscreen navigation to change their viewpoint. Looking back and forth is much harder, so make sure people don’t have to do it. Perhaps you can move the podium, or simply stand near the screen and give up the podium altogether. (That’s a good technique in real life, too.) I encourage you to walk out into the audience as you speak; this will engage them just as it does in real life. 6. Ask for a larger screen 7. Ask if everyone can see the screen You can find technical instructions for creating a PowerPoint presentation in Second Life here. Second Life offers a great new possibility for presenting in virtual reality. However, the same principles of presenting apply. Consider your audience and make sure that your slides are meaningful and clear. April 27, 2008 Amazing! Grand opening of Virtualis conference center in Second LifeOn April 23 and 24, 2008, I attended the grand opening of Virtualis, an amazing new conference center in Second Life. I was new to Second Life until about 3 weeks ago, so there was that amazement to get past. If you don't know, Second Life is a 3D virtual world that lets you build practically anything, script objects (using Second Life Script, or SLS), interact with others using an avatar (your persona in Second Life), by text or speech, and even conduct business! You can purchase virtual land and create your own world, keeping it private or making it public, as you choose. In fact, many businesses have locations in Second Life. Here's a short list:
You can find a more complete list at New Business Horizons. I've also read that many universities teach classes in Second Life. The people of Virtualis Virtualis is the dream-come-true of Dan Parks, its owner. Dan is President / Creative Director of Corporate Planners Unlimited, Inc. and a member of MPI (Meeting Professionals International) and several other meeting/ conference/ travel-related organizations. Working closely with Dan is Gloria Nelson, CSEP (Certified Special Events Professional), who has her own event design and meeting management company, Gloria Nelson Event Design, LLC. Several other people are involved as well, but I can't list them all. Over the last couple of years, the team has designed, built, and programmed the most incredible conference center, one that can hold many types of events. They've created both traditional (as traditional as something can be in Second Life) and outrageously creative meeting places. The facility can be used for conferences, meetings, parties -- practically any type of get together you can think of. They've already done a priviate birthday party, with live music, dancing, and virtual food! What you could do with Virtualis Do you arrange meetings or conferences? Imagine the possibilities! People who can't travel can attend via the Virtualis conference center. They can see live streaming video of the live conference. You can even do the opposite -- stream a video of the Virtualis group into your live conference. People from around the world can meet there for smaller meetings. They even have a yacht! Virtualis can set up an exhibition hall, highlighting speakers, with working links to their Web sites. After the meeting, attendees can enjoy entertainment such as music, dancing, even fireworks! If you have a chance to present in Virtualis, or any place in Second Life, first read my tip on best practices for presenting in Second Life. The grand opening The grand opening included presentations throughout the two-day period. Here's a partial list of the speakers:
Look at the gallery of screenshots I took, and be amazed. I was!
Here's a movie (4 sec.) of Jodiah Jensen, a programmer, showing on the spot how he can rotate a cube in the air. Here's another movie (13 sec.) showing the dance party. Note that the movie is"laggy" because of the process of capturing it. When I viewed it at the time, the motion was smooth and up to speed. If you're interested in using Virtualis for a conference, meeting, or party, contact Dan Parks. April 22, 2008 Review of PowerPoint 2007 Complete Makeover Kit
Both authors are PowerPoint MVP's (Microsoft Valuable Professionals) and experts in their field. If I could distinguish the two, I'd say that Echo is the technical expert and Geetesh is the design expert. The individual talents that each author brings to the book is part of what makes it so valuable. Each makeover combines both workflow magic and design artistry so that you'll learn much more than you expect. Warning: Don't try to read this book on your morning commute! I tried reading the book on its own and it wasn't very satisfying: the authors don't always show you before and after for each and every step. This book is a tutorial and you need to put the excellent CD in your CD drive and do the exercises. It's in the actual execution of the makeovers that you see the results on your screen. Meanwhile, you get a feel for the fastest way to correct major problems in a presentation and how to make it look much better. The book has an easy humor which I found appealing. Here's a quote from p. 87: "Every company has folks who are either too busy or too lazy. They don't want to do anything until the last minute, and the third presenter in our group presentation—Dan Klipkoos—is one of them! His slides look like a hurried, five-minute job. His reasoning is that he'll add the content after the presentation has been through the makeover that the design agency is doing! "So, yes, you could fret and insist that Dan send the content now, but that won't help. Therefore, in this section, we'll show you how you can work with incomplete slides." The CD includes all of the presentations that you'll work on. The authors have done something pretty amazing: they've saved each presentation at every step of every chapter so you can start at any point. This means that you don't need to go through an entire chapter if you don't want to. But I encourage you to do so, because the transformation that you'll see is very satisfying. The CD also includes images, music tracks, templates, and themes. If you go through this book, not only will you know PowerPoint 2007 a whole lot better, but you'll never look at a presentation in the same way again. You'll learn to apply a broad viewpoint that will enable you to vastly improve all of the presentations that you deal with. Another plus is that the book is in full color! I'm very jealous, as none of my publishers has let me create a book in color. At least not yet. But for PowerPoint, the result is stunning. You really can see the difference between that blue and that gray. If you've recently upgraded to PowerPoint 2007 and want to not only learn how to use it well but to improve your presentations, I highly recommend this book. April 21, 2008 Turn off pop-ups when presenting In a given day, or week, or month, how many messages pop up on your computer to:
Warning: Some of these pop-ups may appear while you're presenting in slide show view! Not a pretty picture! After a few minutes of inactivity (let's say you're answering questions), does your screen saver kick in, or does your computer go into hibernation mode? Before you get into such a situation, right now, start making a list of the pop-ups that you see, and research how to turn them off. It's not always easy to find the answer, because the software companies want you to see those pop-ups! One possible solution may be to disconnect from the Internet, or disable your wireless connection, if you don't need it during the presentation. Remember that many meeting venues have wireless networks, so your computer may try to connect during your presentation. And disconnecting may disable many other pop-ups. The method depends on your operating system. In Windows XP, you would probably choose Start> Control Panel> Network Connections. In Windows Vista, try Start> Control Panel> Network and Sharing Center. You can configure Windows updates by choosing Start> Control Panel> System and clicking the Automatic Updates tab. In Windows Vista, choose Start> Control Panel> Security or Security Center> Windows Update. If you turn them off during your presentation, remember to turn them back on afterwards! However, some pop-ups don't depend on an Internet connection or may still pop up a message asking you to connect! For example, Outlook reminders may use your computer's internal clock. Therefore, you should try disconnecting from the Internet and see whether or not you still get some pop-ups. Of course, you can't do that for several times just to make sure -- that would probably be going too far! But the more planning and testing you do, the less likely that embarrassing pop-up will show its ugly face during your presentation! April 12, 2008 A number of communication experts have recommended slide design as follows:
In an article, "Rethinking the Design of Presentation Slides," the Pennsylvania State College of Engineering discusses the concept of assertion-evidence design. This means that the slide title is an assertion, a statement, and the body of the slide provides some evidence for that assertion. The article's context is technical presentations and includes a study showing that students did better on an exam when the presentations were done using assertion-evidence design.
Actually, most teaching follows this scheme. For example, I just made a assertion that assertion-evidence led to better student exam results, and then showed you the slides as evidence. I call this tell 'n' show. It's the opposite of the show 'n' tell that you may remember from 6th grade, because first you tell (in the slide title and by speaking out the statement), and then you show (by using a visual, and explaining it). The visual can be a graph, a photo, or a diagram. Here's a before and after slide from the article: Before:
After:
The topic may be too technical for you (it is for me), but when you look at both slides, two conclusions are clear:
The tell 'n' show principle applies to business use, not only teaching technical topics. In a business environment, you want your audience to clearly understand what you're saying. Whether you're giving a persuasive presentation or not, audience comprehension should always be your first goal. Here's a slide that I sometimes use when discussing how to create effective presentations, shown in 2 versions. Which is more effective?
Do you see how the statement at the top is clearer in the second example? And how the 3 components catch your attention much more when they're in a diagram? (Note: You can create this type of diagram very easily with PowerPoint 2007's SmartArt feature.) This slide comparison brings out a third point, namely that bullets can't show relationships By turning the bulleted text into a diagram, I'm making clear that you a presentation involves starting with your content, then designing the slides, and finally delivering. I'm not a purist when it comes to full sentences in the title. I could have said, "A presentation's 3 components" and it would also be clear. I think that "Annual sales up 7%" is as clear as "Annual sales were up 7%." The difference is only a matter of adding a verb, or not. The important point is that the title should say something, not be just a heading. So, "Annual sales" would not be a good title. Try doing a makeover of an existing presentation that has lots of bullets. For each slide, use the slide title to tell your main point, and then use the body of the slide to show it visually. You'll be amazed at the results! Special Offer! If you send me a before and after presentation ( no more than 3 - 5 slides please!) by May 10th, I'll pick the 3 best examples and send you each a free copy of my new e-booklet, "7 Steps to Great Images." Click here to send the e-mail.
April 5, 2008 In the PowerPoint discussion group, in response to a request, Shyam Pillai shared a presentation that has a drop-down menu. Shyam is one of the best PowerPoint programmers around and his "proof of concept" is very elegant. However, you can create a drop-down menu using animation. It will be less elegant, but doesn't require programming. The main menu button is used as a trigger, so that when you click it, the animation starts. If you want the dropped-down menu to disappear for the next use, the method is a little more complex. Look at a drop-down menu in PowerPoint 2003 or other program. You'll notice that the drop-down menu just appears under the menu name. If there's some animation involved, it's too fast for me to see. However, I liked the effect of a wipe down animation, so that's what I used. You can use the Appear animation instead.
Note: If you now create links on the other slides to go back to this slide, you'll find that the submenu doesn't disappear. It may disappear once, but try again, and the Disappear animation won't work any more! that's because PowerPoint disables certain features when a slide is displayed more than once.
Here's how the presentation looks:
Watch a movie of the drop-down menu.
March 26, 2008 My site has so many tips on it now, that I'm aware of the fact that they can be hard to find. Don't forget that the Tips menu has a Search box where you can search for tips that meet your needs. Another way to discover new tips is to find out what other people are looking at. Here are the top 3 tips from February, 2008:
March 25, 2008 New e-booklet! "7 Steps to Great Images" My newest work is a 22-page e-booklet that describes 7 steps, or techniques, that you can use to banish unprofessional images in your presentations and replace them with images that really pack a punch! The e-booklet is based on content from my webinars and on principles I've developed over the years. At only $6.95, you can buy one for yourself and another for that colleague who really, really needs it. E-books make great take-homes for conferences and meetings. Recently, a conference organizer bought 40 copies of my 101 Tips Every PowerPoint User Should Know, to give each attendee one on a flash drive. What a great idea! And more useful than the tee shirt you usually get. March 25, 2008 March 2008 Resource of the Month - Presentation Zen Presentation Zen is Garr Reynold's blog on on presentation design from the Zen perspective. His articles and ideas are always interesting and right on. His designs are inspiring. March 24, 2008 Free Background of the Month - Tiles This sophisticated tiling reminds you of a mosaic. Of course, you should change the photos to suit your situation. The photos are AutoShape fills. The download file contains both PowerPoint 2003 and 2007 versions.
March 24, 2008 Importing a PowerPoint presentation into FlashIn my Putting Flash animation in PowerPoint tip, I explain how to bring a Flash movie into PowerPoint, but how about bringing a PowerPoint presentation into Adobe Flash? You can't do it directly, but you can save the files in WMF format and import them into Flash. This method does not preserve any animation or transitions. However, you can, of course, add animation in Flash. Here's how:
Note: WMF is a vector format, which means that the images are defined by equations rather than dots. WMF images can be resized without losing their resolution. Flash uses vector graphics.
March 24, 2008 Use materials and lighting for interesting fills You can fine tune the fills of your AutoShapes (Shapes, in 2007) by applying a variety of surface materials and lighting treatments. The differences are subtle but can impart a more professional result and create a realistic 3D look. PowerPoint 2007 has added many additional material and lighting settings. I've covered PowerPoint 2007 separately below. For PowerPoint 2002/2003 In PowerPoint 2002 & 2003, you have a few options for changing the surface characteristics of an AutoShape by choosing one of 4 surfaces. You can also change the direction of the light and its brightness. These settings are all on the 3D Settings toolbar. To start experimenting with these settings, follow these steps:
Here are some results:
For PowerPoint 2007 PowerPoint 2007 has added to the number of options that you have for surface and lighting effects. Follow these steps:
Tip: For a description of the various materials and lights, click the ? at the top of the Format Shape dialog box.
This slide displays all of the materials, with assorted lighting settings.
March 16, 2008 How many bullets should I put on a slide?People often ask, "How many bullets should I put on a slide?"
First I'll tell you what others are saying. Then I'll give you my answer. "6 lines or less per slide, 6-8 words per line" "6 words per line, 6 lines per slide" "Limit the number of bullets per slide to five or fewer." You get the picture. I think that rules like this are nonsensical. It's not that they're are totally wrong. It's true that you shouldn't have too much text on a slide. Why? When you display the slide, people start reading it. They can't read the slide and listen to you at the same time. You might as well shut up for 2 minutes while they read, because they aren't listening to you. But bullets have other problems: (Caution: Here come a couple of bullets!)
Bullets are boring The truth is, people have had bad experience with presentations that have too much text and too many bullets. So you start out on the wrong foot when you use slides of bulleted text. People immediately tune out. Bullets are for outlines or lists What' wrong with outlines? When you present, you should be developing your message logically. For example, you might state the premise that most people waste a huge amount of money paying interest to the bank for their mortgage. Then, you need to back up that premise with fact, figures, examples, anecdotes, and so on. Your presentation shouldn't be an outline. It should be a full development of ideas. Of course, that full development should be expressed in what you're saying. But bullets give the impression that what you're saying is just an outline, rather than a well-developed presentation. Bullets are text based, non-visual The purpose of PowerPoint slides is to add a visual aid to your speaking. So, let it be visual! Remember that your talking is the presentation; the PowerPoint slides are not the presentation. A great deal of research shows that people will remember effective images more clearly and longer than text. And you do want people to understand and remember what you're saying, don't you? However, the images need to be related to what you're saying. They should either add to the understanding or create a relevant emotional impact. Irrelevant images actually hinder remembering, according to research. What do I use instead of bullets? If you have a lot to say, how do you avoid bullets? An easy way is to put one concept on a slide. Just break up those 6 bullets into 6 slides. And add relevant, powerful photographs. If you want to tie up the ideas into a conclusion, then you can put them all on the 7th slide. At that point, your audience will be familiar with the concepts and can integrate them more easily. Time for some visuals! For example, you could take this slide...
... and expand it to these three slides.
Then, if you want to review the three ways to help audiences understand, use the bulleted slide as the 4th slide. By then, they'll understand the 3 items and the slide will have more meaning. When are bullets OK? Besides summarizing, is there ever another good time to use bullets? Bullets are lists, and sometimes you want a list. For example, an agenda slide is a good place for bullets.
There's nothing wrong with this slide. No images are necessary. It's meant to be a list. You're not developing any ideas. There are no concepts to wrap one's brain around. Garr Reynolds in his blog, Presentation Zen, says the following: "People often ask me how many bullet points is enough for their presentation. My answer is always the same: as few as possible...how about zero? In general, the more bullets your PowerPoint has, the less effective your presentation will likely be." Here are two more of my tips that discuss the issue of bullets:
March 8, 2008 Put a presentation on a CD that runs automaticallyYou can send potential clients or friends a CD that contains a presentation that runs automatically when they put the CD in their CD-ROM drive. If you add narration, the presentation will start automatically and run from beginning to end by itself. This technique works well for sales brochures that you create in PowerPoint, for a narrated slide show of your vacation pictures, or any other use you can imagine. The beauty of it is that the receiver doesn't even have to have PowerPoint. You can also create many variations on the steps below. For example, you can add music instead of narration. Or, you don't need to add timing to slides; instead, you can add an instruction to click on the slide to go to the next slide. These steps show you how to create a presentation with narration and then save it to an auto-run CD. You'll need the following:
Follow these steps: Create the slides for the presentation. Write a script and print it out. Practice delivering the script in Slide Show view. In Normal view, choose Slide Show > Record Narration. (In PowerPoint 2007, choose Slide Show tab>Set Up group>Record Narration.
In the Record Narration dialog box, click Set Microphone Level and follow the instructions. You should see a green indicator in the volume bar as you speak. If necessary, use the slider to adjust the volume. If you don't see the green indicator, you need to check your microphone settings. When you're done, click OK to return to the Record Narration dialog box.
Click OK to start narrating, according to your script. You'll automatically go into Slide Show view. As you talk, click to advance to the next slide. By doing this, you'll be adding timings to each slide. When you get to the black slide after the last slide, click to exit Slide Show view. You'll see this message, asking if you want to save the slide timings. Click Save. What this does is save the timing for each slide so that it exactly matches the time you needed for each slide's narration.
Go into Slide Show view and review the presentation to make sure it's what you want. My main experience was that the sound wasn't very good, indicating that I should probably buy a better microphone. When you're satisfied, switch to Normal view, save the presentation, and choose File>Package for CD. (In 2007, choose Office button>Publish>Package for CD. In 2007, you'll see a message about formats, because there isn't a 2007 PowerPoint viewer. Click OK)
In the Package for CD dialog box, name the CD. If you want to add other presentations, click Add Files, browse to them, and click Open. If you want to change the options, click the Options button. Here you can add a password, if you want. By default, the PowerPoint Viewer is included, which allows people without PowerPoint to view the files. Click Copy to CD. You may see one or more messages. Some that I've seen are: A message about including linked files in the package. If you have linked files, such as audio or video files, click Yes. A message about about macros, linked objects or embedded objects not working in the PowerPoint Viewer, and asking if you want to continue. Click Continue. This won't be a problem if your viewers have PowerPoint. A message about ActiveX controls. This is an unusual situation, but if you have added an ActiveX control to your presentation, the receiving computer must also have the control to view it. However, in my experience, the Viewer just doesn't play an ActiveX control. Your CD-burning software may pop up, but in my experience, you can ignore it You'll now see a Copying Files to CD window that shows you the progress. You see a window asking if you want to copy the files to another CD. If you just want one CD, click No. Otherwise, put in another CD and click Yes. Your CD should eject from your CD-ROM drive.
In the Package for CD dialog box, click Close. Put the CD back inside the drive. The Viewer opens and you need to click Accept to accept the license. After that, your presentation plays. The PowerPoint Viewer has some limitations:
February 29, 2008 February, 2008 Resource of the Month - TED - Ideas worth spreading February 29, 2008 Prezvision: An interview with Wataru Sugawara, CEO of SoftAdvancePrezvision (actually, prezvision, with a lower-case "p") is an exciting new 3D animation program that starts with PowerPoint content and creates an amazing transformation. Because you start with PowerPoint, you can easily create 3D animation that would otherwise involve very expensive software and a huge learning curve. Wataru Sugawara, CEO of SoftAdvance, the company that created Prezvision, and Ron Radcliff, VP of Business Development, showed off the software's capabilities at PowerPoint Live in New Orleans, in October, 2007. Wataru Sugawara agreed to be interviewed by e-mail. EF: What gave you the idea to create prezvision?
Here are two other important features:
EF: How is Prezvision unique? WS: Prezvision is unique in several ways:
EF: How do you envision people using Prezvision? By that I mean, for what purpose? WS: We are targeting all types of people who must impart to others a clear visual message in a short time. For instance, you can imagine the following people:
EF: What are your future plans for the software?
EF: Do you have some samples on your Web site? Note: Version 1 is available now from www.prezvision.com/en. Version 2, which has more features like Graph from Excel, CAD import and so on, is due out in April.
February 29, 2008 Use an audience-centered structure In my webinar, "Create audience-centered presentations," I covered many ways to organize, design, and deliver a presentation around the needs of the audience, and in turn, get better results. If you missed it, I can share one of the concepts in the area of organization. First, why create a presentation around the needs of the audience? You'll be able to keep your audience on the same page as you, resulting in better understanding, more retention of the material, and greater motivation to act. Remember that if you present what you want to say instead of what the audience wants to hear, you may miss the mark completely. Most people start and end the wrong way, especially in a sales-type presentation. They start by telling the audience about themselves, perhaps with a history of the company and a list of other clients. Then they start to talk about their product or service. Finally, they mention the problems that it solves. But the audience cares first and foremost about a solution to their problem. They want to know how you can solve the issues that keep them up at night. So, that's where you should start -- with the problem. Researching your audience's situation in advance is very helpful for knowing what the problem is. It may not be obvious. You may think that the quality of your product and its excellent price are important. Your potential client might be more concerned about service. Here is a better order for structuring your presentation:
By considering your audience first, you've turned the presentation upside down. The next time you prepare a presentation, think about this order. Your audience will thank you for it. February 29, 2008 Recolor graphics in PowerPoint 2007 PowerPoint 2007 introduced the ability to recolor and adjust bitmap graphics. Bitmap files types include GIF, JPG, and PNG. You can recolor both inserted images and background images. These are exciting, new capabilities. Previously, you had to use third-party software to accomplish this task. To insert a picture from a file, choose Insert>Picture and choose the picture file. To insert a picture from the clip art collection, choose Insert>Clip Art In the Clip Art task pane, enter keywords. Be sure to specify the type of clip art that you want from the Results Should Be drop-down list; you can specify photos only, for example. You can make minor adjustments to brightness and contrast, or completely recolor an image.
The subject in this image is a little dark, because the sun was so bright. To make it brighter, double-click the image to display the Format tab. In the Adjust group, click Brightness to open the Brightness gallery.
Choose one of the positive values. You can see the difference in your photo immediately. To increase contrast, click the Contrast button and do the same thing. Of course, you can decrease brightness and contrast as well. Make your choice depending on the requirements of the image.
You can make more exact changes by choosing Picture Correction Options at the bottom of the Brightness or Contrast gallery to open the Format Picture dialog box, with the Picture category displayed.
Here, instead of choosing from 10% increments, you can enter any value you want for Brightness or Contrast. You can also reset the picture to its original settings. You can recolor a photo, too. Recolored photos display one color predominantly and they're great for creating backgrounds, because text shows up well against them. Here's a slide using a clip art photo (use sunrise as a keyword to find this one).
Let's say that you want to cover the entire slide with this photo. The problem would be that text wouldn't show up very well in front of it. Here, I've reset the photo (I had cropped it to fit it on the right side of the slide), then recropped it to fit the entire slide. I've changed the text to white. It isn't terrible, but the clouds are pretty busy behind the text. Reducing the contrast helps, but you don't want to dampen the drama of the photo too much. Instead, you could infuse the photo with a color. To do so, double-click the photo to display the Format tab. In the Adjust group, choose Recolor to display the Recolor gallery.
Hover the cursor over a color to see the results immediately. Continue to do this until you find a color you like and click. Or choose More Variations to see the theme colors, where you can choose More Colors to choose any color you like. Here I chose orange.
Here's a photo from clip art that I use a lot because of its presentation theme.
Here it is again, recolored in a teal color, and reduce the contrast by 10%
Usually, I blur it a little too. Then it makes a great background. But that's another tip! A wonderful new capability is being able to make the same brightness, contrast and coloring changes to a background. To insert a photo as a background to an individual slide or the slide master, right-click any slide or the slide master, and choose Format Background. In the Format Background dialog box, choose Picture or Texture Fill, and then click the Picture button to choose the file you want to use.
Then, click the Picture category on the left, to display the exact same controls you have for the Picture category of the Format Picture dialog box (shown earlier in this tip). You can now change the brightness, contrast, and coloring of the background!
Don't forget that you can right-click any image that you've inserted, let's say from clip art, and choose Save as Picture to save it. Then you can insert it as a background.
February 28, 2008 Use advanced animation to show growth & motion You can create the illusion of growth and motion using the technique of frame animation. Frame animation duplicates the same object in slightly different positions or sizes and then quickly displays one after the other. This is how old-fashioned movie animation was done. Remember, though, that this process was very labor-intensive. Good animation is usually 15-30 frames per second, meaning that you need to create at least 15 images for each second of animation! You can create a simpler version in PowerPoint fairly easily. You can use this process for anything that moves or grows and that you can draw in PowerPoint using AutoShapes. Here's the basic process that I use:
Tip: Very Fast, the fastest option in the Speed drop-down list, is .5 seconds, or 2 frames per second. This may work for you but is slow for a real animation effect. You can't make it faster in the Speed box in the Custom Animation task pane, but after you create the animation, you can make it faster. Select the animation item that appears in the task pane's list, click the drop-down arrow, and choose Timing. In the Speed text box, type a new speed. You can set the speed to a precision of 2 decimal places. For example, .07 seconds would be approximately 1/15 of a second. Click OK.
Here's the tulip animation, which uses medium and slow speeds. After all, tulips don't open that quickly. Here's the bird animation, which uses a speed of .3 seconds, or 3 frames per second. You can download the presentation here.
February 28, 2008 Results of poll on PowerPoint versions With 97 people voting, here are the results of the poll on which version of PowerPoint you're using:
The percent of people using PowerPoint 2007 is steadily rising. Some people are upgrading, but others are buying new computers that come with Microsoft Office 2007 and thus upgrade by default. I've been including instructions for PowerPoint 2007 for months, but now I'll start including an occasional tip that applies specifically to 2007. January 31, 2008 I have 3 great webinars coming up:
January 31, 2008 I've created 2 polls that will help me serve you better. If you haven't already done so, please complete both. One takes a few seconds, the other less than 5 minutes. Click the links below to enter. Thank you! January 31, 2008 January, 2008 Resource of the Month - Six Minutes: A Public Speaking and Presentations Blog January 31, 2008 Free Background of the Month - Fireworks! Great for any celebration or to generate excitement about a project. January 27, 2008 Add flexibility with custom shows You may need the flexibility to vary your presentation, depending on the audience, last minute decisions, or the amount of time you have available. Building this flexibility into your presentation can avoid embarrassing time overruns, last minute corrections, or not having the information an audience member asks for. There are several ways to create options that allow your presentation to change at the last minute. For example, you can include hyperlinks to other presentations that you can use if necessary. But one of the most useful and powerful techniques is custom shows. A custom show is a set of slides within your presentation that you name. For example, you might have 2 slides that you call Details. These slides can provide additional information that you can go to if appropriate. A custom show can have 2 purposes:
You can create any number of custom shows. When you use the custom show, you can do so in 2 ways:
First, figure out how you'll use the custom show, that is, whether you'll want to return to your original slide, or end with the custom show. Then, create the slides for the custom show. While they don't have to be consecutive, you'll find it easier to keep your navigation straight in your mind if they are consecutive. Also, it's easiest if you put them at the end of the main set of slides that you're sure you'll show. Then define the custom show:
So, your presentation might look like this:
You link to a custom show; it's really a hyperlink. By specifying whether you want to return to the original slide, you control how the custom show works in the framework of the rest of the presentation. Note: Slides in your custom show display if you just click through to the end, without using the link to the custom show. Therefore, if you decide not to use the custom show, you need to be careful to stop at the last slide before the custom show, which would be Slide 4 in the example above. I suggest putting some visual sign on the last slide (Slide 4), to remind you not to continue. A neat workaround is to hide the custom show slides. Select them in the Outline pane and choose Slide Show> Hide Slide. Now, the slides won't show unless you click a link to them. I've discussed 2 scenarios Using the above slide structure, here's what you might do for each: Scenario 1: Let's say that you want to have the option to display the custom show slides after Slide 3, then continue on to Slide 4. Follow these steps:
Here's what will happen.
Scenario 2: Let's say that you want to have the option to show the custom show instead of Slide 4. Follow the same steps as previously, but don't check the Show and Return check box. Here's what will happen:
As you can see, custom shows give you flexibility when you present, and allow you to create non-linear presentations. They are a powerful tool. January 14, 2008 Try design variationsDesigners have an excellent sense of color, but even they try out variations to see which looks best. Those of us who are not designers absolutely need to create variations of colors before making a final decision. Color has a major impact on the effect of a presentation, but on a subtle level. By changing a presentation's colors, you can make it more upbeat or more low key. Colors are well known for their emotional effects, although different people react differently to the same color, and different cultures apply different implications to colors. So rather than go by a set list of effects, you can try out variations and see what you like most. You can also ask others how they feel about the variations. Finally, you may be able to get some feedback from your audience about the colors. Of course, this is not always possible. Here are 3 slides that are identical except for the color of the text at the bottom of the slide.
How do these slides differ in their effect? Your feeling might differ, but my impression is the following:
No color is necessarily right or wrong, but one color might be more appropriate than another. Here are 3 more colors:
Again, you might feel differently, but here are my observations:
In some cases, especially depending on the background, several colors may work well. In other situations, few colors will work well, and you'll have to try many variations, including many shades of one color (should the red be bluish or orangey?), before you'll find the right one. Once you decide on the appropriate colors, you should create a color scheme (called theme colors in PowerPoint 2007). You need to come up with title text color, body text color, major fill color, and supplemental fill colors. Follow these steps:
Creating a custom color scheme (theme colors in 2007) is an excellent first step when you create a new presentation from scratch. December 23, 2007 Congratulations to Bob Mathews and Alan Taylor for winning a copy of "7 Steps to Great Images!" They both sent in excellent slides using the "False Background" technique in response to my offer for the free e-booklet. December 22, 2007 The Earth and Water background is a soft, yet crisp title bar with a teal-colored Earth at the left and the texture of water throughout.
December 22, 2007 December, 2007 Resource of the Month - Presentation Magic December 16, 2007 Do you design PowerPoint presentations? Do you have difficulty getting your company -- or your clients -- to realize the importance of good design? Perhaps you can provide some information about the relationship between design and profits. Here's a point to make: Peer Insight, a research firm, did a 3-year study of the performance of more than 40 Fortune 500 companies from 2000 to 2005 and found that those that focused on customer-experience design outperformed the S&P 500 stock index by a 10 to 1 margin. Recently, Fast Company magazine, wrote an entire issue called, "Masters of Design." naming several masters. One of them is Yves Béhar. Béhar's work has become so well known, that one of his design's, the Leaf LED lamp for Herman Miller is shown in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. And the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art honored him with a solo exhibition this past fall. He is perhaps best known for the $100 laptop, which he designed for Nicholas Negroponte and MIT Media Lab's One Laptop per Child project.
Béhar notes that only a few companies, including Apple, Target, Procter & Gamble, and Nike, have the type of "full-throttle engagement" in design, making sure that design is important in everything the customer sees and feels. This includes not only the product, but the packaging. Archetype Associates, a consulting firm, examined the backgrounds of 368 board members of the 30 companies in the Dow Jones Industrials Average and found that only one, Steve Jobs at Disney, with a design background. This means that companies don't feel that design is an expertise worth having on their boards. Those few design people who do get support, have it from the very top. According to Béhar, a company that makes an emotional connection to users will gain long-lasting customer loyalty. He's talking about products, of course, not PowerPoint presentations. But design-driven companies incorporate good design into all that they do. You see it not only in their products and packaging but on their Web site and in their brochures. You see it in their Annual Report. Tell the powers that be that if they use professional designers for their Web site and printed materials, they should do the same for their PowerPoint presentations. Consider yourself, whether or not you have formal training, a design professional. (If you don't have training, petition to have the company pay for you to get some.) And make sure that the company knows the importance of good design. December 8, 2007 Undim bulleted textBulleted text elicits a lot of animated, opinionated discussion. I've covered the pros and cons of bulleted text and provided some tips for working with, or without, them: Sometimes, you can't think of a way to avoid bullets. So, how do you format them? Some people like to animate (build) the bullets so that they come in one-by-one. I recently heard a Web seminar by an experienced presenter in the CAD (computer aided design) field say, "I hate it when people bring all the bullets in at once. I can't figure out which item the presenter is talking about. Please, make it easy on me." And just before that, I heard another experienced presenter say, "Building bullets is like spoon-feeding the audience. I hate it when presenters do that!" So, is there a middle ground? Yes! This technique brings in all the bullets at once, dimmed, but readable. Then you undim them as you discuss them. People who like to see all the bullets at once are happy, and those who like a clue as to the current item you're discussing are fulfilled as well. PowerPoint doesn't have an undimming feature, so you need to change the font color, using animation. Here's are the steps:
Try this technique the next time you create a bulleted slide and see if the audience is happier! December 2, 2007 The Magic of False Backgrounds Glen Millar, of Glen Millar Communications, introduced this animation/graphics technique at the PowerPoint Live conference. He called it the False Background. It isn't really a false background, but uses the technique of giving an AutoShape (shape, in 2007) the same background as the slide. You can then animate the AutoShape/shape, or layer it, for some stunning results. Follow these steps to set up this technique:
Now, you need to animate the AutoShape (shape) to create the result that you want. Or you can layer it without animation. Here are some ideas. You can probably come up with others. Technique 1: Zoom In In this technique, you use the Zoom In emphasis animation to zoom in to a section of the image.
Play the animation! You'll see a section zoom in and magnify the image. See the animation. (Note that capturing the video makes it jerky. It looks a lot smoother in PowerPoint.) Technique 2: Crop an Object By layering AutoShapes (shapes), you can create a cropping effect. This effect can be static or animated. This is one of the effects that Glen showed at PowerPoint Live.
See the animation. (Again, in PowerPoint, it looks much smoother.) Technique 3: Mix Grayscale with Color Like the previous technique, this one layers shapes. The outside area is grayscale, and the area inside the shape is in color. Glen showed this technique, too. I've left it unanimated.
Technique 4: Fly In the Image Glen showed this animation as well. The image is broken up into 4 pieces which fly in and build the image, like a jigsaw puzzle. You can vary the animation effect in any way that you want. You can also add thick outlines around the 4 shapes.
See the animation. Remember that it looks better in PowerPoint. You might expect the rectangles to always display the part of the image that they cover, but they remember their "final home" location, and display that. Click here to send me a 1-slide presentation using this technique and I'll send you a free e-booklet, "7 Steps to Great Images," from one of my seminars. (The above offer has now expired.) November 30, 2007 November 2007 Resource of the Month - VectorMagic is a free service from Stanford University Artificial Intelligence Laboratory that vectorizes bitmap images. In other words, it takes JPG, GIF, TIF, or PNG files that are made up of dots and translates them into lines and equations. You can resize vector files without losing sharpness, which is the main reason to use this service. It works especially well with pixilated logos. November 24, 2007 PowerPoint Live 2007 ReportI've just returned from PowerPoint Live 2007 in New Orleans. This is my second year, and each time I've felt that I learned so much! This time I'd say that the underlying theme was creating audience-centered presentations. (That's my term; I didn't hear it at the conference.)
Rick Altman PowerPoint Live offers 3 sessions at a time, for 3 days, and I couldn't attend all of them, of course. The 3 tracks are:
You'll be seeing some tips, techniques, and articles come out over the next few months that are based on what I learned. For now, I'll review some of the highlights of the sessions I attended. Jim Endicott of Distinction Communication, Inc., gave the keynote address on Monday morning, "We've Come a Long Way: The Coming of Age for the Presentation Professional." An important point was that we need to switch from focusing on "giving" presentations to focusing on audiences "getting" them. He made the point that companies spend $100,000's on printed materials and their Web site, but often don't do the same for PowerPoint presentations, even though those presentations are just as crucial to the company. He said that companies are just starting to realize how much is lost with bad presentations. Julie Terberg of Terberg Design spoke about developing PowerPoint templates for larger corporations. However, the points she made were useful for anyone who creates many presentations that have shared features. She explained how to create sets of slides for various situations and concepts that can then be used over and over. One point that she made that I heard several times was the importance of not putting too much content on a slide. This is because people simply can't grasp so much at one time. The solution is to split up the content into multiple slides. Julie Terberg and Nancy Duarte Sandy Johnson of Presentation Wiz did a session called, "Living with Bullets: When you must use bullets in your slides." The title says it all: bullets are not the ideal format for slides. However, she went through some pointers that can help make bullets a little more palatable, including:
For designers who are told that they must use bullets, she recommended an excellent technique; return to the person with a bulleted slide and an optional graphics slide (containing the same content). He or she will almost always choose the graphics slide. Julie Terberg of Terberg Design also gave a fascinating demonstration of some of her animation work, slides that were done in PowerPoint but looked like they were done in Adobe® Flash®. She works in a precise way, using a grid and guides to precisely position objects, and then adding multiple animation effects to the objects. She plans these complex animations on paper first, and some take many hours to complete. You had to witness these creations to appreciate just what PowerPoint can do. Jim Endicott of Distinction Communication, Inc., also gave a second session, "The Mother of All Makeovers: Using images, not words, to tell a story." Jim talks a lot about telling stories and about the fundamentals of persuasion. To make the point that slides shouldn't be overloaded with content, he related a 2000 study at Columbia University. Here's an article, "Too many choices?" about that study. When people had a choice of a table with 24 jars of jam and another with 6 jars of jam, more people went over to the table with more jars of jam, but they bought less jam from that table! The table with fewer jars of jam had fewer visitors, but sold more. Jim spoke about the importance of finding out what the audience wants, and knowing what you want the audience to do after the presentation. Buy something? Call for a consultation? He covered his "Seven-Step Persuasive Message Model," which shows a presenter how to organize an effective message. Each year the participants meet with representatives from Microsoft and get to ask lots and lots of questions. This is very fulfilling! (Haven't you wanted to tell Microsoft what you think about PowerPoint?) Not only did we get answers, but we learned a lot about how the PowerPoint team thinks and why some requests are hard to fulfill.
The Microsoft PowerPoint Team Nancy Duarte, of Duarte Design, gave the second keynote presentation, called "Shift Happens: New changes in global technology will impact presentations." Some of the talk was inspired by her recent visit to India. Nancy worked on Al Gore's famous presentation, "An Inconvenient Truth." She spoke about several trends that are affecting presentation design today, including the global economy, the proliferation of electronic devices, and social networking. She also mentioned an interesting study showing that companies that consider design important ("design-driven companies") do better financially than those who don't emphasize it. This is the importance of branding and presentations are a part of it. George McCaskill, CTO of Perspector, a 3D add-in for PowerPoint, gave a fascinating talk called, "Lessons from the Rocket Scientists: Building presentations that take off." It looked at presentations from a systems point of view, including:
He discussed Requirements Management, which involves collecting the requirements, or needs, for the presentation and managing the process to meet those needs. It uses processes like project management to ensure a higher rate of success. Glen Millar, of PowerPoint Workbench, introduced a fantastic, new animation technique, which I'll reveal later on, perhaps next month! Keep an eye out for it. He calls it the false background. Rick Altman, of R. Altman & Associates, also the organizer of PowerPoint Live, and Sandy Johnson produced a "play" to show how a PowerPoint expert in a company could respond to poorly-made slides that come from presenters. Topics included:
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