PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

PowerPoint and Presenting News: January 10, 2017

We first bring you Jan Ole Kjellesvig of YAY Images, who talks about their amazing add-in for PowerPoint that lets you search for pictures objectively. Did you know that they have a TextSpace feature that shows pictures that can work best with superimposed text? We then feature Pooja Jaisingh, who talks about her new course on LinkedIn Learning called Captivate 9 Advanced Techniques.

In the Tutorials section, PowerPoint 2016 users can learn about the Change Picture option, how you can reset pictures, reposition cropped pictures, Shape Effects, and Preset Effects for Shapes. PowerPoint 2010 users can learn some quick tricks about Duplicating Slides. Finally, do not miss the new press releases and templates of this week.

Read Indezine’s PowerPoint and Presenting News.

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

Working With Slide Numbers in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows

If your presentation has many slides, it will be easy to identify the current slide in Slide Show view, as long as you have enabled slide numbers on your slides. In PowerPoint, you have to make these slide numbers visible since they don’t show by default.

Learn how to add Slide Numbers on slides and Masters in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows, and more tricks on making them work to your will.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2016
Tagged as: Microsoft Windows, Office 2016, PowerPoint 2016, Slide Numbers, Tutorials

Apply Shadow Effects to Shapes in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows

PowerPoint’s Shape Effects are used to enhance the look of your shapes, and with PowerPoint 2016 providing a vast repertoire of effects, you can easily get busy playing with all the options available! To save time, you can apply any of the Preset shape effects. If you choose to apply individual effects, the time involved may be more, but the results can be distinctive. For example, even with something as simple as the Shadow effect, there is no dearth of options available.

Learn how you can apply Shadow Effects to shapes in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2016
Tagged as: Effects, Microsoft Windows, Office 2016, PowerPoint 2016, Shadow, Shapes, Tutorials

Better Presentations: Conversation with Jon Schwabish

      Jon Schwabish is an economist, writer, teacher, and creator of policy-relevant data visualizations. He is considered a leading voice for clarity and accessibility in how researchers communicate their findings.

In this conversation, Jon discusses his new book, Better Presentations: A Guide for Scholars, Researchers, and Wonks that helps people improve the way they prepare, design, and deliver data-rich content.

Geetesh: Jon, can you tell us what motivated you to write your book, Better Presentations? Was this a gradual decision or did you have a moment that made this decision for you?

Jon: The short version of the story is that Columbia University Press contacted me to write a book about data visualization, following the publication of my article in the Journal of Economics Perspectives in the early part of 2014. But I was resistant to writing a book strictly about data visualization, mostly because I thought it was a hard topic to cover thoroughly, from data extraction to exploration/analysis to visualization/communication (but it turns out that others–such as Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic and Andy Kirk–have covered different chunks of those processes to great success).

By that time, however, I had developed a keen interest in presentation design and techniques, and knew there was an opportunity to write a book on presentations for people who deliver data-rich content. The book is written for that audience—researchers, scholars, analysts—anyone who works with data and who needs to present it to an audience. In my experience, many people who work with data and conduct research simply take their written reports and convert them to presentations—they copy their graphs and tables and paste them into a slide, and turn their text into bullet points. But there is a better way and it starts with recognizing that a written report and a presentation are two fundamentally different forms of communication. The goal of the book is to help presenters all the way through the process: From presentation construction and design to building the presentation, to ultimately delivering the presentation.

Geetesh: People have different perspectives when they present, or when they attend someone else’s presentation. How will your book help presenters understand that they need to look at their presentations from the eye of the audience?

Jon: Throughout the book, I try to make the case that there is only so much information our audience can absorb at the same time. It’s very difficult for an audience to absorb the information you want them to when you are asking them to read 5 dense bullet points and listen to you talk simultaneously. We’ve all sat through these terrible presentations, so we know there is a better way to communicate our work, and this book is hopefully a step in that direction.

I admit right at the front of the book that you don’t need to have a background in graphic design to deliver a great presentation. You may not have the time to create a custom color palette, scour the Web for the perfect image, or learn a whole new set of design skills. The book is not meant to turn people into graphic designers; however, if you can learn to recognize good, smart design (and utilize things you like and things you don’t like), then you can become familiar with some basic aspects of great design such as color, font, and layout, and use these approaches in your presentations. What the book is meant to do is show you why you should create more effective slides, and how to do so in easier and faster ways.

So I take the reader through the entire process of planning, designing, and delivering a presentation. I start by demonstrating how outlining and sketching can help you cut to the core of your ideas and figure out the best way to communicate your ideas to your audience (I’ve put a downloadable version of the worksheet I use in my own process on my website). I then walk you through how to choose and use colors, fonts, layouts, and good data good data visualization principles in your slides. Finally, I talk about the actual act of presenting—what supplies you may or may not need when you speak, why you should smile, why not to pace, and so on.

Overall, I pull the book together by encouraging presenters to follow three guiding principles:

• Visualize your content. We are better able to grasp and retain information through pictures than through just words, so visualize your content when you can; this includes text, statistics, and numbers whenever possible.
• Unify the elements of your presentation. This means consistency in your use of colors and fonts, format of your slides, and integrating what you say with what you show.
• Focus your audience’s attention where you want it at all times. Instead of putting up as much information as possible on every slide, keep your slides simple and free of clutter so that you can direct your audience’s attention. Here, I demonstrate a technique I call Layering—presenting each piece of information on its own. Together, the points come back to the original, but are now presented in more effective way for the audience.

You can find more information about the book—including downloadable worksheets, PowerPoint slides, icons, and images—at the book section of my PolicyViz website.

© Visualized, Inc. 2015-2016

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: Better Presentations, Books, Interviews, Jon Schwabish

Apply Preset Effects to Shapes in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows

PowerPoint provides six types of Shape Effects; more than one of these effects can be applied to a selected shape. Some combinations of these effects look better than others. Having said so, practicing restraint not to go overboard with all effects is always a good thing. Also, trying out all the effect combinations may take a lot of time. Fortunately, the Presets option comes to your rescue. This option lets you use pre-combined combinations of the different effects.

Learn how to apply Preset effects to shapes in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2016
Tagged as: Effects, Microsoft Windows, Office 2016, PowerPoint 2016, Shapes, Tutorials