PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Tweet Cards in Microsoft Sway

Cards in Sway are essentially containers for your content. To place your Twitter content in Sway, or even a tweet from someone else, you will first need to insert a Tweet Card. Add a new Tweet Card to your Storyline. To do so, select the Tweet card option within the Media cards category. You will end up with the Tweet Card added to your Storyline.

Learn how you can use Tweet Cards in Microsoft Sway.

Filed Under: Sway
Tagged as: Cards, Media Cards, Online Presentations, Sway, Tutorials, Twitter

Overcoming Visual Clichés with Visual Clichés!

We have discussed visual clichés in the past. The idea has been to explain how you can overcome these visual clichés by using the four principles of:

1. Thinking creative,
2. Thinking profound,
3. Thinking logical, and finally
4. Thinking again.

In a recent case study on clichés, we spoke about how everyone thinks about a light bulb when they need to express a bright idea. In fact, a search on Google Images for the term, “bright idea” singularly returns only visuals of light bulbs!

Recently, a picture featuring an unusually large number of light bulbs was noticed in an Accenture advertisement. Strangely, this did not seem clichéd. Why did this happen? Why did the cliché go away?

Is that because there is a way of overcoming a visual cliché, and that is to go overboard with the actual cliché itself! As they say, there is safety in numbers. Do too many instances of the same cliché make it a pattern? And do patterns make clichés insignificant? That’s something interesting, and can help you when you have few options to go beyond a visual cliché.

Patterns are created using multiple instances. Why do multiple instances of the same cliché negate each other? The answer to that question may be the fact that poison kills poison—at least this last metaphor of poison killing poison is very well known in the Orient and in India.

In the Mahabharata, an Indian epic, there is the story of Duryodhana, who planned to kill his cousin Bhima. He tried to execute this plan by poisoning Bhima’s food. And then, when Bhima fainted as a result, Duryodhana threw him into a nearby river. Poisonous snakes in the river bit Bhima, and this poison negated the poison that Bhima had earlier consumed. Thus, Bhima swam up the river and survived to one day kill Duryodhana!

And it seems like this poison kills poison metaphor may work with clichés too! One cliché may get negated with multiple instances of the same cliché.

So, is it possible that you can overcome a cliché by going overboard? That’s food for thought! We have found that this approach can work sometimes, but only if implemented thoughtfully and tastefully.

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: Pictures and Visuals
Tagged as: Clichés, Design, Graphics, Ideas, Opinion

Transparency for Shape Fills in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows

Shape fills such as solid colors, gradients, pictures, and textures can have a transparency attribute that lets you reduce the opacity of a fill so that the slide object or background behind shows through. Transparency is calculated in percentages and you can change its value all the way from 0 to 100%. Some fill options, such as pattern and slide background have no transparency options.

Learn how to apply Transparency to shape fills in PowerPoint 2016.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2016
Tagged as: Fills, Microsoft Windows, Office 2016, PowerPoint 2016, Transparency, Tutorials

PowerPoint and Presenting News: May 24, 2016

We feature so many experts, who share their immense knowledge with Indezine readers. Ellen Finkelstein talks about how you can become a webinar expert. Carmen Simon explains how you can create memorable content that audiences won’t forget. Jim Endicott explains how you can find your presentation metaphor. Claudyne Wilder talks about her fantastic Torchmetrics product that lets you find out more about your audience’s perceptions of your presentations. And for those of you who sorely miss the free Clip Art option in PowerPoint, there’s great news–Pickit brings back free pictures!

PowerPoint 2016 for Windows users can learn more about fills for shapes, such as advanced gradient fills, gradient stops, texture fills, texture tiling options, and picture fills. Finally, do not miss the new templates of this week!

Read Indezine’s PowerPoint and Presenting News.

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

No Fill in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows

After learning how to add different fills for shapes in PowerPoint 2016, now it’s time to learn how to remove any fill from a shape so that your shape only has an outline without a fill. Whenever you insert a new shape into a PowerPoint slide, it is filled with a solid color by default (or the default fill may be different depending on the Theme applied to your presentation). Most of the time, you may leave that unaltered, but there are times you want just the outline to be visible. It is in scenarios like these where it can be useful to learn how to remove any fill.

Learn to remove fill from selected shapes in PowerPoint 2016.

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