Jul 19 2010

Ensure Your PowerPoint Presentation Spurs Discussion

Don't be a slave to your PowerPoint slides! (c)Thinkstock

Don't be a slave to your PowerPoint slides! (c) Thinkstock

You have an important internal presentation coming up where you’re going to present to a group of senior managers at your company. Here’s your big chance to make a great impression and land the promotion you’ve been after. You’re excited to learn that they’re going to give you a full hour. You invest a lot of time in creating the perfect presentation. However, as you finish your last slide right before the hour is up, you realize you made a critical mistake — you left no time for group discussion. As your audience quickly files out the door to their next appointment, you’re left wondering if you should have structured your PowerPoint presentation differently. Continue reading “Ensure Your PowerPoint Presentation Spurs Discussion”

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Jun 03 2010

Image Fading Technique in PowerPoint

Image fades can be useful in many ways (just like a good pair of jeans). (c) Thinkstock

Image fades can be useful in many situations (just like a good pair of jeans). (c) Thinkstock

You may have run into a situation where you wanted to fade a part of an image for a PowerPoint slide. By fade, I don’t mean the fade animation effect in PowerPoint. By fade, I mean blending the image into the background color or another solid color of your choice. You may have thought you needed Photoshop to create a fade effect with your images. However, you can achieve a fade effect directly in PowerPoint using an object with a blended transparent gradient fill. Continue reading “Image Fading Technique in PowerPoint”

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May 07 2010

What Makes an Image Good for Presentations – Part II

Composition also makes images better. (c)Thinkstock

Composition also makes images better. (c)Thinkstock

In the first part of this article, I discussed how good presentation images need to be both relevant and unique. In terms of the uniqueness of an image, there are two factors: the subject of the photo and the composition of the photo. In the previous article, I looked at how the subject of the photo can make a presentation image more interesting, and now I’m going to turn my attention to the second area: composition. Continue reading “What Makes an Image Good for Presentations – Part II”

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Apr 27 2010

What Makes an Image Good for Presentations – Part I

Lots of photos are taken, but few are chosen. (c) Thinkstock

Lots of photos are taken, but few are chosen. (c) Thinkstock

If you’ve read any presentation design books lately (Presentation Zen Design, Slide:ology, etc.), you’ve probably decided to use more images in your presentations. However, you may still be wondering if the images you’re selecting are good, average, or lame. Using more lame or average images in your presentations is about as helpful as adding more bullet points or animations to your PowerPoint slides. Continue reading “What Makes an Image Good for Presentations – Part I”

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Apr 05 2010

Editing Grouped Objects in PowerPoint 2007

Sometimes you want to move a group of objects together and other times you want to move just one element. (c) Thinkstock

Sometimes you want to adjust a group of objects together and other times you want to adjust just one element within a group. (c) Thinkstock

Recently, a new PowerPoint 2007 user from Australia contacted me about being frustrated with one of PowerPoint’s new features. You may have run across this inconspicuous feature when you attempted to move a grouped object and rather than moving the entire grouped object, you end up accidentally moving just a sub-element of that object. You may have wondered what is going on because in PowerPoint 2003 you would have to ungroup an object before you could reposition any of its sub-elements. Continue reading “Editing Grouped Objects in PowerPoint 2007”

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