PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Presentation Summit 2016: Conversation with Ryan Orcutt

  Ryan Orcutt joined Duarte in 2004 as a graduate of Chico State’s School of Communication Design and now contributes as Associate Creative Director. His 12-year tenure has allowed him to help some of the world’s most influential speakers craft, visualize, and deliver some of today’s most compelling and persuasive visual stories. Ryan’s skill lies in his ability to combine his natural abilities as a visual thinker, storyteller, and designer. If you dropped in at Duarte headquarters, you’d most likely find him leading a client workshop, drawing a storyboard, or bartending the Friday afternoon happy hour.

In this conversation, Ryan discusses his session at the upcoming Presentation Summit 2016 series.

Geetesh: You are presenting right after the keynote on Monday, and your session is called Why Presentation Design Matters. What do you believe attendees will take away from your talk?

Ryan: First, I believe my talk will remind the attendees of the importance of the work they do every single day. In today’s fast-paced, business-savvy world, presentations have become the default way the most innovative ideas and critical messages are shared. And because of that, how you design a presentation can determine whether or not an idea is accepted, or a message is heard. Your skillset as a presentation designer has never been in more demand and your value to a business is never higher. I hope to encourage people to accept that responsibility and be deeply proud of what they do.

Second, the attendees will get a glimpse into several real-world project transformations. They will be able to see some of the design techniques used as the presentations went from unclear, underwhelming, or forgettable to persuasive, impactful, and memorable. With the right design, these slides became presentations that moved people. And you can do it, too.

I hope that attendees walk away with a renewed passion for presentation design and some fresh techniques that they can take back to their desks.

Geetesh: Ryan, how do you approach presentation design? Many designers just think of presentations as an extension to print and graphic layouts—what should they know about presentation design?

Ryan: I approach each presentation I work on as if it was my story to tell. I try to learn as much as possible about the topic and find something about the message, person, product, or idea to fall in love with. The deeper in love I fall, the better the work. The best part, these are short love affairs with something new just after the next deadline.

Additionally, I never think of presentations as just a sequence of slides. I think of them more like movies with flow, pace, and contrast. Your approach to crafting presentations changes when you use that mindset. You focus less on titles, transitions, and individual data points, and you focus more on the audience, what you want them to feel, and the transformation you want them to undergo. Don’t get me wrong, the titles, transitions, and data points are important, but they all need to be in service of the message and the desired transformation.

Finally, remember that the best presentations are ones that have been approached from 3 different angles. The visuals, the content, and the delivery. A presentation can be made better by improving any one of those components, but it’s only when all three elements have been addressed that a presentation will truly sing. This means collaboration—designers, writers, and speaker coaches all working together on parallel tracks. It can be a tricky balancing act, but one that pays big returns if mastered.

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: Events
Tagged as: Duarte Design, Events, Interviews, Presentation Summit, Ryan Orcutt

Identify Your Version and License of Microsoft PowerPoint and Office on Mac

Do you use PowerPoint and other Office programs on a Mac? Do you know which version you are using? And if the version question seemed easy, do you know what sort of license you are using? In this post, we will explore an easy way to identify version and license details for Microsoft Office on the Mac.

We have used PowerPoint for all the screenshots. However, the same process should also work with Word, Excel, and other Office programs. Follow these steps:

1. Run PowerPoint. If you see the Presentation Gallery, opt to create a new presentation, or alternatively open any existing presentation. Yes, you do not want to create or edit presentations now—but PowerPoint will not let you identify it under the hood unless you open a presentation first! We just created a new presentation, as shown in Figure 1, below.

Thank you so much, Anneliese Wirth, at Microsoft who helped me create this post.

You May Also Like: Identify Your Version and License of Microsoft PowerPoint and Office on Windows

Filed Under: PowerPoint All Versions
Tagged as: Anneliese Wirth, License, Microsoft Office, Office for Mac, Tutorials, Version

Edit Annotations with Ink Tools in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows

When you use the Pen and Highlighter tools to annotate, you are provided with an option to save those annotations when you exit Slide Show view. If you do opt to save them, then you will actually open doors to new capabilities that will allow you to edit these annotations – in fact, you can also change these annotations to shapes and work more with them!

Learn how you can edit your Pen and Highlighter annotations in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2016
Tagged as: Annotation, Highlighter, Ink, Microsoft Windows, Office 2016, Pen, PowerPoint 2016, Tutorials

PowerPoint and Presenting News: August 30, 2016

Rob Bailey of Eyeful Presentations explores the changes at Eyeful, and also how Brexit influences the EU’s presentation industry. Celebrated speakers at the upcoming Presentation Summit in Las Vegas talk about their sessions — we feature Emma Bannister, Heather Ackmann, Jon Schwabish, and Mike Parkinson. Make sure you read what they say, even if you won’t attend the conference!

We feature Microsoft Sway again this week. You can learn about the My Sways page, and also about Accessibility View in Sway. We then show you how you can create outlines for PowerPoint presentations in Word 2016. PowerPoint 2016 for Windows users can learn how to create their own Theme Fonts set. 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

Using the Pen and Highlighter Tools in Slide Show View in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows

While presenting and interacting with your audience, annotation on a slide can play an important role, and PowerPoint provides you with useful Pen and Highlighter tools that can change your static slide into a whiteboard upon which you can doodle and write! In this tutorial, we will learn how these tools can be helpful.

Learn how to use the Pen and Highlighter tools within Slide Show View in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2016
Tagged as: Annotation, Highlighter, Microsoft Windows, Office 2016, Pen, PowerPoint 2016, Slide Show View, Tutorials