If you grew up playing video games in the 80’s, you’ll have fond memories of Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man. These classic arcade games were revolutionary in their day and continue to be favorites today. If you compare their simple 2D format to today’s lifelike first-person shooters, you wonder why people still continue to play them. The fact is their simple game play is still infectious.

Over the years, I’ve seen several lame variations of Pac-Man. In order to add sizzle to the Pac-Man theme, some game developers have tried to add a 3D perspective to the traditional 2D game — but with limited success. They took something simple and fun, and transformed it into yellow 3D crap.

2D to 3D: Don't mess with something that works

I’ve seen a similar practice with charts in PowerPoint. In hopes of making a chart more stylish or impactful, presenters may add a 3D perspective to their charts. Using 2D charts all the time can be repetitive and maybe even boring. I’ve shared how you can add a nice bevel effect to your 3D pie charts in PowerPoint 2007. However, I was recently reminded why you need to be careful with 3D charts.

Someone recently asked me what was going wrong with a 3D pie chart in one of their PowerPoint presentations. Although Japan and South Korea represented 37% and 27% respectively, S. Korea looked larger than Japan (see 3D chart on left).

Why does Japan (red - 37%) look smaller than S. Korea (blue - 27%) in the 3D pie chart on the left? Compare it with the 2D version on the right to see how the slices are being visually distorted.

After examining what was going wrong, I identified that the 3D perspective was the culprit. Due to S. Korea being in the foreground, it deceptively appeared larger than Japan which was at the back of 3D pie chart. In the graph above, you can see how the 2D pie chart on the right more clearly reveals the true size differences between the various data points. If you absolutely have to use a 3D pie chart, I strongly recommend labeling the slices so that your audience can more easily interpret the data.

3D chart problems are not isolated to just pie charts. Bar charts can be difficult to interpret when a 3D perspective is used, especially the more extreme the 3D effect. When the 3D bar chart’s axis is angled or skewed, it becomes more difficult to compare data points and requires “value” labels in order to be usable.

3D bar charts can be difficult to interpret. 2D bar charts may be simple, but they are also easier to interpret.

When you’re debating between 2D or 3D charts, try to remember your audience. No matter how “pretty” your charts look, they need to be easily interpreted. Just like Pac-Man, it is never a bad idea to just keep things simple. If you’re interested in more information on this topic, Garr Reynolds of Presentation Zen fame has an interesting post on 2D and 3D charts.

How can I get this 18 MB PPT file to our client in Chicago in the next 7 minutes? (c) iStockPhoto / contour99

You killed yourself to complete a PowerPoint presentation on a short deadline. You put a lot of time and effort into your slides — crafting a cohesive message, choosing some great images, and building some advanced animation effects. What a relief that you were able to submit everything on time, and you’re confident that you’ll receive great feedback on all your hard work (promotion, hello?).

One small problem — as you check your email or voicemail the next day, the intended recipient of your presentation states that he never received the file and is urgently requesting it. Ugggh!

Despite the advancement of server capacity and lower storage costs, many IT departments are still fairly draconian in how they limit email messages to less than 7 MB in size. You may be used to the judicious email attachment limits at your company (10-15 MB), but your recipient’s company may be ruled by the iron fist of a merciless IT overlord.

What can you do in these stressful situations besides curling up under your desk and sucking your thumb in the fetal position? One typical solution in the past to this type of problem has been to use a compression technology like WinZip to reduce the size of a large PPT file. PowerPoint 2007 has zip compression technology built into its new PPTX file format so zipping a large PPT 2007 file will have little effect on reducing its size as it’s already compressed.

Here are some useful options to consider the next time you find yourself in this unfortunate but common situation:

Picture Compression

One of the fastest and easiest ways to bloat your PowerPoint presentation is with oversized, high resolution images. With various presentation experts such as Garr Reynolds and Nancy Duarte recommending the use of more photographic images in presentations, I imagine more presenters are running into this problem.

If you’re using a lot of pictures you may have to reduce your images’ sizes in a photo editing program to the exact sizes you need (rather than resizing them in PowerPoint) or save them to a lower resolution (at least web quality). Be especially careful not to paste too many screen captures directly into your PowerPoint slides as they can quickly inflate your file size.

It may be difficult and time-consuming to go back and edit your images so you might want to consider using PowerPoint’s built-in picture compression feature to reduce your PowerPoint file size. To access this feature, click on an image and then select Compress Pictures from the Picture Tools / Format tab on the Ribbon. Be careful that the compression doesn’t degrade your image quality too much.

Use the compress pictures functionality to reduce your PPT file size.

YouSendIt

YouSendIt can save your neck

If there’s no way that you can make your PowerPoint file any smaller using picture compression or the compression has an adverse effect on image quality, you may want to consider using a content delivery service such as YouSendIt. There are other content delivery options (Rapidshare, CuteSendIt, etc.), but YouSendIt is the most popular and widely used. You can email up to 100 MB files for free, and you can pay extra to be able to send 2 GB files.

FILEminimizer Office (formerly PPTminimizer)

Balesio software offered a tool named PPTminimizer, which managed the compression of PowerPoint files. The company appears to have expanded its compression offering to cover the entire Microsoft Office suite. With a free trial download of FILEminimizer Office, you get 12 free “optimizations” before deciding if you want to spend $44.95 on their software. I used the old PPTminimizer tool, not the new FILEminimizer Office version, and it worked fairly well.

Gmail

20 MB isn't too shabby

Desperate times sometimes require desperate measures. Although it may be a little less professional to ask for someone’s Gmail address (and maybe even a little enlightening — e.g., mylittleponyfreak@gmail.com), it might be a viable option in the case of extreme email emergencies. Gmail allows you to send and receive emails that are up to 20 MB in size (Yahoo Mail and Hotmail are limited to 10 MB).

Other options

If you just need to get the content to someone and not necessarily the actual PowerPoint file, you can convert your PowerPoint presentation into a PDF document, which should reduce the file size. There are also several tools available for converting PowerPoint slides into Flash files, which should reduce the file size as well.

I used this baseball analogy in Japan. Go Ichiro!

When you’re presenting a complex or unfamiliar concept, an analogy can be a very effective communication tool. An analogy draws connections between something unfamiliar and something well-known - e.g., web governance (complex / unfamiliar) and baseball (straightforward / familiar).

I swapped out Ichiro for A-Rod in my US version of this slide. When A-Rod ran into problems, I switched him out for Manny. In the end they both ended up being tools...

Analogies are especially powerful for presenters because they are concrete and as such highly visual. You can transform a boring PowerPoint presentation into something memorable by simply adding one or two well-chosen analogies with complementary images. As someone who builds technology and strategy presentations, I use analogies extensively and find them to be a great way of communicating new or difficult concepts.

Although analogies can effectively bridge information gaps, if you use the wrong analogy you can end up confusing your audience and weakening your presentation. The next time you decide to use an analogy in a PowerPoint presentation, you might want to consider the following seven questions:

1. Can your audience relate to the analogy? Just because you can, doesn’t mean that your audience can as well. For example, analogies that are appropriate in one country or culture can backfire in other parts of the world.
2. Does your analogy clarify your concept? Be careful that your “good analogy” doesn’t end up being equally confusing or even more confusing than just a straightforward description of your new idea or concept.
3. Is your analogy short and simple? Try not to be too clever. If your analogy is too long or complex, your audience may lose interest before you can introduce all the connections.
4. Is your analogy boring? If you have fun with your analogies, more people will remember them. The greater the contrast on the surface level between two things (e.g., computer processors and duck hunting), the more dramatic and interesting the connections will be for your audience as you bring them together (just remember rule #2 and #3). In addition, some analogies have been overused (e.g., “it’s like learning to drive”). Try to be unique when possible. Current events and pop culture can be great material for analogies that stand out.
5. Can you use strong visual images with your analogy? Some analogies lend themselves to better, more impactful images than other analogies. Keep the visual nature of possible analogies in mind as you decide which ones you’re going to use for your presentation.
6. Can your analogy go the distance? In some cases, you only need a “sprinter” that will work for a specific high-impact concept on 1-2 slides. In other cases, you may need a “long distance runner” that can be carried through your entire PowerPoint presentation. A “sprinter” analogy only needs one or two strong connections; whereas, a “long distance runner” analogy will need several good connections. Make sure you use the right analogy type depending on what you’re trying to do.
7. Is there “loose wiring” in your analogy that prevents it from communicating effectively? Sometimes a key mismatch in your analogy can obscure otherwise great connections in other areas. Rather than throwing away the analogy, review it in your mind for a while and you might find a hidden connection that saves or even strengthens the overall analogy. Be prepared to abandon a perceived “good analogy” if you can’t ignore or fix obvious “loose wiring”. Trust your gut.

Push pins in PowerPoint 2007 can be time savers (c) iStockPhoto/Talaj

If you work with multiple PowerPoint presentations each week, it can be difficult to quickly find key presentations when you need them at a moment’s notice. I’m frequently reviewing other people’s PowerPoint slides and going back and forth between several of my own presentations. There are a couple of new features in PowerPoint 2007 that can benefit heavy PowerPoint users and save you time. More…

The Dharma Initiative might want to mix up their passwords for their top secret PPT presentations.

If you share your PowerPoint slides with other people inside or outside your organization, you may want to control or lock your slides so that they can only be viewed or edited by select people.

Nothing can be more painful than seeing your carefully designed PowerPoint presentation being butchered by random individuals within your company. PowerPoint provides a couple of options to control what happens to your slides after you’ve built them. More…