PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Align Shapes in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows

Creative freedom may require no aligning of objects on a slide geometrically. Indeed, you may want everything placed in an organic, non-aligned manner. Ultimately, the decision to align can differ on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes, alignment works, and at other times, an unaligned bunch of shapes looks perfectly natural and organic.

Learn how to align shapes in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows.

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

emaze Android App: Conversation with Motti Nisani

Motti Nisani is the CEO of emaze, a company that produces a tool of the same name. With emaze, you can create presentations in virtual 3D worlds or simply in slides. Motti has a B.Sc. degree in Engineering from Tel-Aviv University, Israel.

In this interview, Motti discusses the new Android app for emaze.

Geetesh: Motti, tell us more about your new emaze Android app. What motivated you to create this app?

Motti: Our new Android app is something that we have been wanting to implement for some time now. We felt that clearly there was a need for something that lets users watch their own presentations, share presentations with others or explore millions of emaze presentations by topic.

The motivation to create the Android app came from our users. Most of Internet consumption today done via mobile devices. In order to give to emaze users a smooth and slick experience to use emaze, we created this mobile application.

Geetesh: Do you plan to build this app for other platforms such as iOS?

Motti: Yes indeed. Our iOS app is coming in a few weeks’ time.

See Also: emaze Announces New Android App! | Automaze in emaze: Conversation with Motti Nisani

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: Android, Emaze, Interviews, Motti Nisani, Online Presentations, Presentation Design

Design Shapes: The Circle, The Sun

Long, long ago I talked about circles and had wanted to bring up this amazing shape back to focus again. It has been a while, but the circle is as important as ever, and will always be.

Why have people, over the years, played around with circles? What is it about a circle that draws people across lands? Probably, the circle was the most important shape known to ancient man and represented the sun. And the sun showed up brightly in the sky, and represented a new beginning, every single day!

Copyright: Image by StockUnlimited

Many ancient cultures, including the Egyptians and the Indians, revered the sun as God. And in turn, these cultures also respected the circle, which represented the sun! In fact, the sun provided inspiration that gave birth to the mandala in India, and we will talk about mandalas in another post. For now, let us look at the relationship between the sun and the circle.

The Egyptians worshipped Ra, the Sun God who is often showed balancing the sun on his head. Over the sun, there is typically a serpent. The picture below shows Ra carved in the tomb of Ramses IV, found in the Valley of the Kings.

Creative Commons: Image by Riccardov

In India, the Sun God was rarely shown as a circle—rather he was shown in a human form. Yet, there were always circles in many forms wherever the Sun God was worshipped. In the Sun Temple at Konark, Odisha, the temple itself was built as a large chariot with 12 pairs (24) of wheels. Of course, the wheel is again a circle.

Creative Commons: Image by Kiranraj120

In future posts of this series, we will look at other cultural and design aspects that represent and refer to the circle shape.

Filed Under: Presentation Skills
Tagged as: Circle, Concepts, Design, Ideas, Opinion, Shapes

Tell Me in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows

Everyone who uses PowerPoint has faced this situation: you know what you want to do with a slide or a slide object, but you don’t know where to find the related option in PowerPoint! PowerPoint 2016 for Windows has a feature called Tell Me that will tell you what you need to do! Tell Me is a text field that you can see in PowerPoint after the last Tab of the Ribbon.

Learn about the Tell Me feature in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows.

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

Gradient Outlines in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows

PowerPoint 2016 provides plenty of options to format Shape Outlines — this tutorial explores an attribute that’s rarely associated with shape outlines but can provide a surprisingly different look, especially when applied to lines that are thicker in weight. This attribute, Gradient Outlines is not accessible from the Shape Outline gallery in the Ribbon but directly from the Format Shape Task Pane that we will explore later on this page.

Learn how to apply gradients to outlines in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2016
Tagged as: Gradients, Line, Microsoft Windows, Office 2016, Outline, PowerPoint 2016, Tutorials