PowerPoint Learning Courses: Conversation with Andrew Pach

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      Andrew Pach is a freelancer, an instructor, and a volleyball player. He embodies a playful but robust approach to life and online teaching. With almost five thousand completed projects for clients (yikes!), he claims to have found part of the secret sauce…but there are so many more ingredients! His favorite quote is, “Pixel perfection is my jam, so is PowerPoint!”

In this conversation, Andrew talks about his PowerPoint learning courses.

Geetesh: You’ve developed multiple PowerPoint courses on O’Reilly Learning-how would you describe their overall focus, and what do you believe sets your teaching approach apart for learners?

Andrew: It’s simple! My course’s focus is to make you the top 1% performer in any topic you learn from me, whether animation, chart creation, or slide design. I teach with practical, real-life examples, not theory. 100% of my courses have dedicated, hand-crafted resources to follow along. I want the teaching to speak for myself, I don’t like to brag or anything like it – but I must mention that I’m one of few instructors who has actually worked for real clients and understands real life expectations realted to presentations, animations, and design.

As for the teaching, I also like to sprinkle in a little humor and personality which is always well received, so the teaching isn’t too dry😊. I like my courses to have a consistent look and feel.

Geetesh: Many professionals see PowerPoint as “basic” software. How do you help learners unlock their hidden potential, especially in animation and storytelling?

Andrew: Typical case of easy to learn, hard to master! PowerPoint unlocked itself when introducing the Morph transition and the ability to import SVG (vector) images directly into the software. I always repeat – PowerPoint’s strength lies in its simplicity. It opens quickly, it works very fluently, it doesn’t buffer anything, and even the 3D models work instantly.

It isn’t meant to be the only tool in your arsenal, but the one you turn to if you feel that the projects you are about to create will be done most efficiently in or with the help of PowerPoint. Additionally, when you are newer to design and learn alignment or vector manipulation or picture editing in PowerPoint, you will have it way easier to learn other programs, like Adobe Photoshop in the future.

Geetesh: What advice would you give to someone who wants to move beyond default templates and create slides that truly stand out?

Andrew: There are four phases in the evolution of a presentation designer:

1. Color schemes, custom fonts, working within a grid. Be consistent.
2. Tell a story, grab emotions, point to what’s important, don’t just do designs for the sake of designing.
3. Inspire yourself with posters, quarterly investor presentations, explainer videos. What do you remember? Is it the color? One of the slides? Replicate it yourself!
4. Find your style but always evolve it or fine tune it. Are you creating YouTube thumbnails? Consider changing the style after a year. Are you creating videos? Improve the intro, the outro, and the transitions. Are you creating presentations? Make impactful openings and attention-grabbing titles (action titles preferably!).

Geetesh: What role does AI play in the way you approach presentation design today? Do you see Copilot and other AI tools as enablers, disruptors, or both?

Andrew: Currently it plays the role of “show me what you can do, and I’ll decide whether I can do it better”.

As per being an enabler or disruptor? Neither, but both! For now, calling Copilot an enabler is too generous, a disruptor, too soon. I see it as an extension, an add-on, a tool that will expand one area of my work, my designs, tweak it, maybe replace something. Same as using PowerPoint, when it’s more efficient, I turn to it, when not, then no. Today, what Copilot (specifically to PowerPoint) does well is image generation, text generation, outlining and giving ideas for sections. I follow every single improvement closely, eagerly waiting for it to create better and better slides. There is a lot of work, native templates, color schemes, shapes and smart arts need to be modernized before it comes all together.

Here is a showcase of some of the projects from my courses, all done in PowerPoint.

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.