Jan 31 2010

PowerPoint SmartArt is Dumb

Theres no Bob Ross feature in PowerPoint to guide you through the process of visual communication.

SmartArt is not PowerPoint + Bob Ross.

PowerPoint is often criticized for encouraging presenters to rely too heavily on bullet points and not helping people to communicate more visually. Microsoft added a feature known as SmartArt to help convert text into various stylized graphics. When you’re designing your PowerPoint presentation, you can quickly rotate through various shapes, colors, layouts, and styles in order to find the right graphic for your presentation.

For novice or casual PowerPoint users, SmartArt can be a handy tool for quickly making your presentation more visual and professional looking. If you decide to use SmartArt in your PowerPoint slides, you need to be careful because SmartArt is dumb. Continue reading “PowerPoint SmartArt is Dumb”

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Jan 16 2010

How to Keep Your PowerPoint Creativity Flowing

Must...finish...this...presentation (c) Shutterstock

Must...finish...this...presentation. (c) Shutterstock

It’s getting late, and you’re the last one in the office besides the late-night cleaning crew. With the soft buzz of a distant vacuum in your ear, you wonder how you’re going to bring everything together in time for tomorrow’s big presentation. You stare blankly at the empty slide in front of you, thinking just a few more slides and you’ll be done. Two hours later, tired and hungry, you’ve made some progress (if you call one mediocre slide progress) and even the cleaning crew has gone home now. Continue reading “How to Keep Your PowerPoint Creativity Flowing”

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