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Geetesh Bajaj is the owner of Indezine.com, one of the best PowerPoint web sites around. He has also written a couple of books on PowerPoint, been the technical editor for several of my books, and is a PowerPoint Most Valuable Professional. I asked him several questions about his book, Cutting Edge PowerPoint for Dummies, to discover what this book is really about.
Ellen: Please explain what Cutting Edge PowerPoint For Dummies covers.
Geetesh: Cutting Edge PowerPoint does not cover every feature in PowerPoint. And nor does the term "cutting edge" means creating sci-fi style presentations with amazing sounds and metallic backgrounds. Now that I have told you what it doesn't cover, let me tell you about what you will learn in the book.
The book is based on my belief that any presentation is a sum of its elements -- and these elements can be slide objects like text, shapes, pictures, info-graphics, and multimedia; or they can be abstract like the flow, navigation, interaction, or color. So each of these topics gets a chapter all to itself where I teach how a PowerPoint presenter or presentation designer can benefit from using these elements in concert with each other. That is what I call "cutting edge" -- so readers can quickly create presentations that look professional, and are also effective. I think color is the most important element that readers to need to be aware of -- nothing can make or break a presentation more than its colors.
There are also chapters on templates, masters, themes, distribution, and add-ins -- and the usual Top Ten chapters in the For Dummies style.
There are two versions of the book available: one called Cutting Edge PowerPoint For Dummies is addressed to users of PowerPoint 2000, 2002, and 2003 while the new Cutting Edge PowerPoint 2007 For Dummies was rewritten for PowerPoint 2007.
Ellen: Why did you see a need for this type of material?
Geetesh: I found that all existing PowerPoint books focused on PowerPoint's menus and commands rather than the elements that make up a slide. And since all slide elements have to work together and exploit the synergies created, there should be a book that looks at the art of creating presentations with the "elements" approach.
Also, I have been working with PowerPoint for almost a decade now -- and I have been an awarded Most Valuable Professional (MVP) from Microsoft for 6 consecutive years. I have learnt so much that you can't find in print. I wanted to share that information with everyone. I feel a book that contains this type of material will help break the monotony of similar looking presentations, and encourage users to experiment and try out newer ideas.
Ellen: Could you provide an example of content from the book that's unique?
Geetesh: Essentially, the entire book is different. This book is not addressed to the user who needs to learn where the menus or tabs are -- or those readers who need a screenshot that shows them how they can save a file. Fortunately, with computing being so prevalent these days, many users don't need that sort of information. This allows me to use the extra pages saved by not including that info for content that is unique and useful. Even then, I ended up with more pages than what the publisher would allow -- so we squeezed in as much as I could, and added a bonus chapter that we put on the CD that's included with the book.
Speaking of the CD, that alone is worth more than the cost of this book!
This book can be used by all PowerPoint users -- be they new users or advanced presentation designers -- that's something unique about the book.
Ellen: In your opinion, what 3 (or so) things could people do to improve their PowerPoint presentations?
Geetesh: I'll say they need to work on 4 areas:
First, as I said in one of the earlier answers, they need to be aware of what color can do. Color is powerful stuff -- ignore it at your own peril.
Secondly, they need to make their slides look more consistent with the use of masters, templates, themes, and slide layouts.
Then they need to be more imaginative -- they need to experiment more and not stay confined to those rules. But to be aware of what rules you are breaking, you first need to know the rules -- that gives you the freedom to break them!
And finally they need to learn a few tricks so that they can quickly makeover a drab presentation to a lively one -- this book has plenty of such tricks.
Note: You can read Chapter 1 for free on the publisher's Web site. |
