PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Presentation Summit 2016: Conversation with Rick Altman

       Rick Altman has been hired by hundreds of companies, listened to by tens of thousands of professionals, and read by millions of people, all of whom seek better results with their presentation content and delivery. He covers the whole of the industry, from message crafting, through presentation design, slide creation, software technique, and delivery. Rick claims to have invented desktop publishing back in 1982 and can show a galley sheet of type that was produced by connecting his Osborne 1 computer to a typesetter across town with a 300-baud modem (that cost $800). An avid sportsman, he was not a good enough tennis player to make it onto the professional tour. All the rest of this has been his Plan B…

In this conversation, Rick discusses his sessions at the upcoming Presentation Summit 2016 series.

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Filed Under: Events
Tagged as: Events, Interviews, PowerPoint, Presentation Summit, Rick Altman

Apply SmartArt Styles in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows

When change colors of a SmartArt graphic, fill colors of individual shapes within the SmartArt change. Other attributes such as outlines or effects are not altered. Rather than individually add these attributes to your SmartArt, you can use the all-inclusive SmartArt Styles option to overcome this limitation. In this tutorial, you will learn how to apply SmartArt Styles to the selected SmartArt graphics in PowerPoint 2013.

Learn how to apply SmartArt Styles in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2013
Tagged as: Diagrams, Graphics, Microsoft Windows, Office 2013, PowerPoint 2013, SmartArt, Tutorials

Shape Fills, Lines, and Effects for SmartArt in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows

After inserting a SmartArt graphic in your slide, you can change the color for the entire SmartArt graphic — this applies new colors to the entire SmartArt graphic including the various shapes it contains. However there may be times when you want one of the shapes to be colored differently — in this tutorial we’ll explore the fill, line, and effect options which can be applied to individual shapes within a SmartArt graphic in PowerPoint 2013.

Learn about fill, line, and effect options for shapes within SmartArt graphics in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2013
Tagged as: Diagrams, Graphics, Microsoft Windows, Office 2013, PowerPoint 2013, SmartArt, Tutorials

Change Colors for a SmartArt Graphic in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows

Although the default colors of an inserted SmartArt graphic may work the best, you may also want to change the colors of the shapes comprising the SmartArt graphic. You change the colors of everything within the SmartArt graphic at one go or change colors of individual shapes within the SmartArt graphic. Follow these steps to learn how you can change colors of your SmartArt graphic in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows.

Learn how to change colors for a SmartArt graphic in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2013
Tagged as: Diagrams, Graphics, Microsoft Windows, Office 2013, PowerPoint 2013, SmartArt, Tutorials

Xara Designer Pro X: Conversation with Nova Fisher

  Nova Fisher has worked within communications with Xara for over 15 years. She has previously founded and managed some successful early-to-market businesses including an internet service provider (ISP) which was founded in 1994, and the creation of one of the earliest online web authoring solutions in 1996, that enabled anyone to create a professional website without the need for any design or technical skills.

In this interview, Nova talks about the new Xara Designer Pro X product.

Geetesh: Nova, Xara Designer Pro X365 is the newest version of an amazing, capable graphic program—but with so many features already built-in, how do you decide which features you will introduce in a new version?

Nova: It’s a combination of customer requests and features that we want to see ourselves. We all use the program a lot of course, and so there are always ideas for new features and improvements – in fact, we always have way, way more ideas and wish list items that we can do. And that’s part of the reason we went to the 365-update model, which means no more yearly releases with a ton of features in, but more regular updates, maybe three or four a year, so users do not have to wait a whole year to get new features or a new version.

Geetesh: Can you tell us about Xara SmartShapes? Also, tell us about your favorite idea that involves SmartShapes.

Nova: SmartShapes are a very useful range of everyday shapes that users can drop right into their documents or websites and then edit in a simple and intuitive way. The dimensions of the SmartShape can be adjusted and also it will automatically stretch or contract as more or less text is included. For example, with the Speech Bubble, the edit handles enable users to change the dimensions of the bubble, add curvature, control the text area, and also tweak the size and orientation of the bubble’s arrow.

SmartShapes include Speech Bubbles, Arrows, Text boxes, Polygons, Stars, and many other shapes. New in Xara Designer Pro X365 are more complex objects, such as smart charts for percentage rings, bar charts and column charts. It’s amazingly quick and easy to add these professionally designed SmartShapes to a document or website.

I find the SmartShapes extremely useful, in particular, the Text Panels and Photo Panels that contain text and photos. I just enter my text /photo and the panel adjusts accordingly or I can select one of the side or corner handles and stretch or reduce, or change the shape and rotate it as required. I use them on my websites, leaflets, and posters. The Speech Bubbles are really useful when annotating a document or drawing. It’s so easy to change the curvature and direction of the pointer.

Geetesh: What are Smart Photo Grids?

Nova: ‘Smart’ Photo Grids smartly resize to fill the rectangles as photos are added or deleted, and users can swap the positions of the photos, and adjust the number of rows and columns and the border/gap between all the photos. Xara also provides ‘Static’ Photo Grids that are simple, fixed, visually attractive grids of photos onto which users can drag & drop their own photos.

Geetesh: What makes Xara Designer Pro X so powerful?

Nova: Xara Designer Pro X is the ultimate all-in-one creative software, that provides powerful vector illustration, photo editing, page layout, and website design, in one unrivalled WYSIWYG design tool.

At its heart, Xara Designer Pro X is a vector-based program, and unusually, uses vector graphics even for editing photos. This has significant benefits in that all the edits are retained, everything is resolution-independent and it is object-orientated editing. So, a user can revert to the original at any stage of editing.

By combining all these tools in one program, Xara Designer Pro achieves faster performance with no program switching, lower memory and computing requirements, an easier learning curve, higher productivity, and significantly better value for money.

See Also: Xara Product Reviews on Indezine

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: Graphics, Interviews, Nova Fisher, Xara