Mar 04 2009

Ten Commandments of PowerPoint Ninjutsu

Many business people use PowerPoint religiously each week. Although millions of PowerPoint presentations are being prepared and delivered on a regular basis around the world, it often feels as though “PowerPoint land” is a lawless “wild west”. Presentation audiences – big and small – have endured heinous PowerPoint sins for years.

PowerPoint users need to be held to a higher standard so here are the Ten Commandments of PowerPoint Ninjutsu that I came up with: Continue reading “Ten Commandments of PowerPoint Ninjutsu”

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Dec 08 2008

Content Staging: Propel Your Slide Content Higher

Like a rocket, introduce your content in stages to propel your slides higher!

When you’re presenting your slide content, the last thing you want to do is overwhelm your audience with too much information on any one slide. If you find that you have too much content on one slide, you can divide it up and spread it over several slides. However, sometimes it’s not about simply breaking the content apart across multiple slides but about displaying the information more effectively in bit-size, digestible chunks in one slide. In these latter cases, I leverage a PowerPoint Ninja technique called content staging. Continue reading “Content Staging: Propel Your Slide Content Higher”

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Nov 20 2008

PowerPoint Slide Transitions are Empty Calories

PowerPoint ninjas hate jelly beans (c)iStockPhoto/Christine Glade

One form of animations in PowerPoint that you may want to avoid is slide transitions. Transitions are the animation or motion effects that occur as you move between slides in a PowerPoint presentation. Continuing in my tradition of comparing PowerPoint to food, I consider slide transitions to be “empty calories” within PowerPoint – high in calories (sizzle) and low in nutritional value (substance). Continue reading “PowerPoint Slide Transitions are Empty Calories”

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Nov 01 2008

PowerPoint Design Principle #1: Consistency

Are your slides consistent like clockwork? (c)iStockphoto/Sabrina Dei Nobili

Too frequently business presentations resemble a rough mishmash of different colors, fonts, and formats. If these slides were a meal, the variety of options on your plate would leave you with some level of indigestion. If you want to enhance the professional look and feel of your slides, you should ensure they are consistent. Continue reading “PowerPoint Design Principle #1: Consistency”

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Sep 23 2008

New Selection Pane Will Keep You Sane

If you have ever built complex animations in previous versions of PowerPoint, you may have experienced the frustration of trying to select and edit objects that were in different layers on a slide. I know I have dreaded making small changes to one object that was behind several other objects or text. In PowerPoint 2007, a great new feature called the Selection Pane was added to alleviate this challenge. Continue reading “New Selection Pane Will Keep You Sane”

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