PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Benefit from Adding Cartoons in Slides: Conversation with Mark Hill

Mark Hill is a Colorado-based cartoonist & illustrator, and he began drawing when he was old enough to hold a crayon without also eating it. His work has appeared in over 200 publications, including The Atlantic, Forbes, and The Wall Street Journal. He has also illustrated over 30 books, (ranging from children’s to business books). His corporate clients include Bayer, Boeing, Cisco Systems, GM, Google, Intel Corp., Merck, Northwestern Mutual, Pepsi & Time Warner. Mark’s website is at Hilltoons.

In this conversation, Mark discusses the use of cartoons in presentations, such as PowerPoint slides.

Geetesh: Mark, cartoons are certainly different than other visuals such as photographs. What, in your opinion are reasons to choose one over the other – and when are cartoons better?

Mark: Photographs and various types of graphics are certainly very useful in presentations, to Illustrate ideas, points or information.

Cartoons have some added benefits. The most obvious aspect is humor— and everyone likes to laugh.

Additionally, a funny cartoon can be a great icebreaker, putting everyone at ease, and helping to endear your presentation to your audience.

Cartoons are also helpful in re-establishing focus and interest in the middle of a lengthy presentation. Even the most attentive listeners can begin to drift and lose focus after a while. A good laugh from a cartoon can bring everyone right back from their fog, post-lunch drowsiness, or smartphones…to listen to you.

Geetesh: Can you share a story about a client using your cartoons in a presentation slide?

Mark: I was hired by a prominent financial services company to create some cartoons for a presentation being given to their upper management. The subject matter of the presentation dealt with how their financial advisors can convince clients to trust them—and to believe in their expertise.

So, in writing the humor, I went right to the crux of the issue, something that people wonder about many fields—what makes you an expert and better than the other guy? (Here is the cartoon):

It apparently got a big reaction from the audience, with lots of laughter…leading into the presenter’s subject.

In that case, I wrote humor to fit a specific subject matter. But often I have clients who are in need of something fast, so I refer them to my collection of existing cartoons for various subjects.

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

Filed Under: Clip Media
Tagged as: Cartoons, Cartoons in Slides, Graphics, Mark Hill

Research Tools in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows

Creating a slide deck, and you suddenly want to authenticate a figure or double-check a fact? Well, there’s no need to open a web browser or even access a conventional dictionary. Research, a less explored option is available within most Microsoft Office applications, including PowerPoint. This option connects with various online and offline reference sources such as translations, dictionaries, and news services.

Explore Research tools to connect with dictionaries, translations, and more in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2013
Tagged as: Microsoft Windows, Office 2013, PowerPoint 2013, Proofing, Research, Review, Thesaurus, Tutorials

PowerPoint and Presenting News: April 25, 2017

We feature another deck from INSCALE. This time we look at their Showcase slides. We also feature Philip Franta of Beamium again who finds that slideshows can be a great way to capture and validate leads. We then explore Arial, a font that everyone has used. We look at a little history.

In the Tutorials section, PowerPoint 2016 users will learn about the Find and Replace Words feature. You can also explore Language Options on the Status Bar and recover unsaved presentations. PowerPoint 2010 users can learn about Research Tools and Translation. Finally, do not miss the press releases and templates of this week.

Stay informed about updated tutorials and happenings on Indezine.

Filed Under: Ezine
Tagged as: Ezine, Indezine, News, PowerPoint

Thesaurus in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows

Are you stuck for a word? Do you know a similar word, and want to try your luck using a thesaurus? Did you know that PowerPoint already has a thesaurus that can help? There are several ways to access the Thesaurus in PowerPoint 2010.

Learn about the Thesaurus in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2010
Tagged as: Microsoft Windows, Office 2010, PowerPoint 2010, Proofing, Thesaurus, Tutorials

OfficeOne Daily Tools: Conversation with Chirag

Chirag runs Office One, a site that explores PowerPoint add-ins, VBA, and more. In this conversation, we explore OfficeOne Daily Tools, a PowerPoint add-in that provides easy access to a bunch of useful PowerPoint tools.

Geetesh: Chirag, can you tell us about your Daily Tools add-in for PowerPoint. What motivated you to create this add-in that provides so many tools?

Chirag: OfficeOne Daily Tools, as the name suggests, is an add-in that aims to help you every day when you develop your story in a PowerPoint presentation. The idea for this kind of product started with knowing how people use PowerPoint daily and where they spend most of their time. Daily Tools is designed to help save time in performing these frequent tasks.

We have another product called ProTools for PowerPoint that help with precise placement and dimensions of shapes to help create professional-looking presentations. We looked at how people use that product and created new tools to quickly perform some of those tasks. The new tools allow you to operate on multiple shapes simultaneously, which is quite an addition to PowerPoint itself.

We also looked at how people use QAT and what gets placed there for quick access to certain features in PowerPoint without having to switch between different tabs in the ribbon. All this data helped in creating Daily Tools that allows you to access professional tools from a single tab.

Geetesh: Daily Tools brings together many PowerPoint commands that are scattered or hidden; does it also add some extra options?

Chirag: OfficeOne Daily Tools integrates its tools so well within PowerPoint that these seamlessly operate with other functions in PowerPoint. This makes it hard to distinguish the new tools from the built-in ones. This is one of the main advantages of the product and also speaks about the extensibility offered by PowerPoint. You don’t want to think that you are using something that is not provided natively in PowerPoint but is coming from an add-in.

In the present version, there are 30 new tools introduced by Daily Tools in various categories including Alignment, Organize, Size, Presentation, and Sharing.

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.

Filed Under: Interviews
Tagged as: Add-in, Chirag, Interviews, OfficeOne, PowerPoint