Jul 11 2009

How Colors Can Make Your PowerPoint Charts More Digestible

Mmmm. It all looks good. Where do I focus? (c) iStockPhoto / Adventure Photo

Mmmm. Fruit salad. It all looks good. But where do I focus? (c) iStockPhoto / Adventure Photo

By default PowerPoint or Excel 2007 will create multicolored pie charts or single-colored bar charts. Unfortunately, these default color combinations can cause charts to communicate less effectively unless they are modified.

In most cases, when you’re using charts in PowerPoint slides you’re trying to highlight a specific data point or a subset of data points:

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Jun 30 2009

Curse of Pac-Man: the Dangers of 3D Charts in PowerPoint

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. Continue reading “Curse of Pac-Man: the Dangers of 3D Charts in PowerPoint”

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Feb 19 2009

PowerPoint 2007: What is Missing-in-Upgrade (MIU)?

Chuck Norris would seriously maim the Microsoft product manager responsible for these upgrade oversights.

Chuck Norris would take down the Microsoft developers responsible for some key feature oversights in PPT 2007.

PowerPoint 2007 has many great features such as its enhanced picture effects, enhanced Presenter View, Selection Pane, Save as PDF file option, new shortcut keys (Paste Special = Ctrl + Alt + V), etc. There are some new features that I’m still not yet convinced that I like such as the Ribbon or SmartArt.

In addition to these notable enhancements, there were some features in PowerPoint 2003 that disappeared or changed in PowerPoint 2007 — but not for the better. Although I would recommend people upgrade to PowerPoint 2007 from PowerPoint 2003, I still have both versions on my work computer. I’ve identified six “missing in upgrade” (MIU) features that would push Chuck Norris and many PowerPoint ninjas over the edge. Continue reading “PowerPoint 2007: What is Missing-in-Upgrade (MIU)?”

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Feb 05 2009

Make Your Pie Charts Pop in PowerPoint 2007

Are your PowerPoint pie charts looking a little tired and stale? Is it time to make your pie chart data stand out? We’ve seen the same basic pie chart design since Office 97.

Look familiar? It's a whole lot of PowerPoint pie chart ugly. Wfffff. I can hear the air going out of your presentation if you're still using pie charts like this one.

Look familiar? It's a whole lot of PowerPoint pie chart ugly. Wfffff. I can hear the air going out of your presentation if you're still using pie charts like this one.

In PowerPoint 2007, there are many new shape effects that can help you to produce Photoshop-like results. One such effect is the bevel effect. When you use it in combination with your pie charts you can really add some zing to your PowerPoint presentations. Continue reading “Make Your Pie Charts Pop in PowerPoint 2007”

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Nov 24 2008

Book Review: The Back of the Napkin

The Back of the Napkin by Dan Roam

The Back of the Napkin by Dan Roam

The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures, written by Dan Roam, is a bold effort at introducing business people to using visual thinking principles to solve problems and communicate more effectively. Visual thinking is something that I feel I excel at; however, I know it has been a challenge for many of my co-workers, managers, and clients. Even if you don’t struggle with visual thinking, I recommend The Back of the Napkin (four of five stars) as it provides a valuable set of processes and frameworks that can even benefit experienced visual thinkers, who probably operate more by intuition than methodology. Continue reading “Book Review: The Back of the Napkin”

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