BrightCarbon Christmas Cards with PowerPoint: Conversation with Richard Goring

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    Richard Goring is a Director at BrightCarbon, a presentation and eLearning agency. He enjoys helping people create engaging content and communicate effectively using visuals, diagrams, and animated sequences that explain and reinforce the key points, which is supported by plenty of resources and tips at the BrightCarbon site.

In this conversation, Richard talks about BrightCarbon’s tradition of creating Christmas cards with PowerPoint.

Gestesh: Richard, when did this tradition of creating Christmas PowerPoint cards start at BrightCarbon? Is there a story you could share?

Richard: We founded BrightCarbon in December 2011, and so, a year after setting up, and full of the holiday spirit we thought it would be fun to do something festive, but in PowerPoint. Obviously. It was, and is, an opportunity to have some fun, push the capabilities of the program, learn how to achieve new things. It’s also a competition between us to see who can produce the best, so that spurs things on a bit.

115 PowerPoint Christmas cards to download and share! | BrightCarbon

The first year I decided to see how far I could push animation in PowerPoint. Could you get 1000 animations on a single slide? Yes, it seems, and I produced a card of penguins skating on a frozen pond, with a very wobbly reindeer with a total of 1006 animations on. I started with a blank slide, and it’s entire PowerPoint, except the music, that I added right at the end. The following year I was egged on to see if I could double it. And so ended up with 3129 animations on a single slide with some fairies lighting up a Christmas tree.

It’s been a great opportunity to try new things in PowerPoint too. An interactive card using triggers to create your own snowman, creating a Rube Goldberg machine-inspired sequence across multiple slides to get Santa and the elves ready for action, conducting your own penguin orchestra to sing festive tunes with triggered audio, a choose your Christmas adventure with links, using Zoom and mouse over techniques for a fully stocked Advent calendar, or some elegant ice skaters using stop motion.

And then there are the less technical ones that engage in a bit of storytelling, blending festive cheer with 1980s Hollywood movies on VHS (one of my personal favorites), or seeing how the turkeys are plotting to take over Christmas (another favorite).

The nicest thing about them is that after a couple of years we started having people email us asking if we were doing them again, which I thought was fabulous, and make me realize that it wasn’t just us having all the fun.

Geetesh: Can anyone download and use these cards? Please do share some thoughts.

Richard: Yes, absolutely! We share the source PowerPoint files so you can customize them to share with your friends, family, colleagues, or anyone else really, who may appreciate some PowerPoint festive cheer. There are 14 new ones this year, but 115 in total, all available to download from our blog post, which showcases them as short video clips, with a link to the file underneath each.

They’re obviously all my favorites, but my most favorite favorite is probably by Marisa, who has created a beautifully elegant sequence of synchronized swimming polar bears, using some clever motion paths, emphasis animations, but also a load of stop motion. It’s really worth downloading the PowerPoint file to see how she’s done it all. It looks beautiful and is definitely one to share.

Have a wonderful time over the holidays, everyone. And please do let us know how you use these cards and what customizations you’ve made through LinkedIn or Twitter!

This profile photo of Richard was created using one of the Christmas cards! )

The views and opinions expressed in this blog post or content are those of the authors or the interviewees and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company.