PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Gradient Stops in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows

Once you add gradient fills to shapes in PowerPoint 2016, you may want to make the gradient fill look a little different — or even a whole lot different. Yes, you can use the More Gradients option to add different types of gradients as fills to the shapes but that only provides more gradient fill types, and does not let you customize the colors within the gradient.

Learn how to work with Gradient Stops and to create new gradients in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows.

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

Create Memorable Content: Conversation with Carmen Simon

    Carmen Simon‘s presentations and workshops help business professionals to use communication and presentation skills to increase revenue, train or motivate others, and overall to stand out from too much sameness in the industry. A published author, Dr. Simon is frequently invited as a keynote speaker at various conferences. She is the founder of Memzy, a company that helps business professionals from all fields improve their presentation skills, whether they deliver content face-to-face, online, or create on-demand presentations.

In this interview, Dr. Carmen Simon reveals additional insights from her science-based book, Impossible to Ignore on how to create memorable and actionable content.

Geetesh: Are there specific parts of a presentation that people remember more, compared to other parts?

Carmen: There are quite a few studies that showed the primacy and recency effects, meaning that people may remember items from the beginning and ending a lot more than items in the middle of a sequence (depending, of course, on the speed of the presentation and the length). We must be careful in interpreting these findings because they are typically linked to short-term memory tests. When long-term memory is concerned and given a longer presentation length, studies show that people make a fixed number of searches for items in the long-term store, and the probability of retrieving a particular item is lower when there are more items. In other words, primacy and recency are not so impactful on memory when we deliver long presentations. However, a poor beginning may lead to a negative emotion, which impacts attention, and in turn influences memory or lack of it. So always treat your beginnings seriously.

Consider a study done using Super Bowl ads, where scientists wanted to see which ads would be recalled better. They discovered that commercials presented during the first batch of ads were remembered significantly better than commercials displayed in the middle or at the end of the program. Since alcohol and tedium that may occur during a football game are likely to interfere with a study, other researchers replicated the study in lab conditions and asked participants to view 15 commercials. After a long-term memory test, findings showed that the primacy effect held strong, while the recency effect faded. This means that whenever we create content, we are well served to place the most important information at the beginning of the sequence and not save the best for last.

Place your most important messages at the beginning of a sequence

Geetesh: What other insights have you discovered while writing Impossible to Ignore?

Carmen: One of the insights people love to hear about is that pictures are not always more memorable than text. For example, in a study I completed, the inclusion of neutral images in text-based PowerPoint slides did not improve recall. It is true that there is plenty of research suggesting that a visual stimulus can have a positive influence on memory. And one explanation for picture superiority springs from a theory called dual coding, according to which the representations for pictures and words are stored in two separate memory systems, and pictures are represented by an image code, while words are by a verbal code. Research suggests that pictures often show recall superiority because they are dually encoded (i.e., they evoke both the image and the verbal code) and these two memory traces increase the probability of retrieving an event.

However, other studies, including my own, confirmed that, even though sequences of images are learned better than sequences of words, they are not necessarily retained better over time and especially when audiences’ memory is tested via free recall. There is a difference between asking people, “What do you remember from a presentation” vs. giving them cues, such as, “Which one of these 3 images do you remember seeing in the presentation?”

In studies I conduct, I notice that I do not have to use pictures all the time to impact memory. There are other techniques that can impact memory just as easily, such as breaking a pattern that viewers have learned to expect (e.g., presenting text after a series of graphics) or using words that paint concrete mental pictures in an audience’s mind (e.g., “Imagine what you looked like if you had a third eye behind your neck”).

These two techniques are useful because they can save presenters money since the inclusion of images in presentation content may imply additional design time and cost.

Pictures are not always more memorable than text. Breaking patterns in stimulation and using visual words can also impact recall.

For more information on how the brain processes information, remembers, and decides to act, read Impossible to Ignore, available at Amazon or anywhere else that books are sold.

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: Books, Carmen Simon, Interviews, Memory

More Gradients in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows

Add a gradient fill to your shape, and you may run into limitations! For one, PowerPoint’s default gradient options choose all the gradient colors for you, and all available gradients seem to be based on the same color family. While this sort of restraint does keep your slides looking consistent and aesthetic, they also prevent you from playing more with gradients. To play more, you must choose the More Gradients option — this option leads you to a detailed gradient editor that’s capable of making changes to the gradient type, direction, angle, color, etc. In this tutorial, we explain these extra gradient options available within PowerPoint 2016.

Explore the More Gradients option for shape fills in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows.

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

TorchMetrics: Conversation with Claudyne Wilder

    Claudyne Wilder coaches executives, managers, and salespeople on how to deliver presentations that get to the message. Her clients give compelling, passionate presentations. Her company has an ongoing contract to give her Get to the Message: Present with a Purpose workshop at a Fortune 100 Global Pharmaceutical Company. Claudyne brings a unique and invigorating perspective to her work from her years of studying the Argentine Tango.

In this conversation, Claudyne discusses her new product, TorchMetrics, that lets you find out more about your audience’s perceptions of your presentations.

Read the rest of this entry »

Filed Under: Interviews
Tagged as: Claudyne Wilder, Interviews, Survey, Torchmetrics

Add Gradient Fills to Shapes in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows

Gradient fills are typically blended fills between two or more colors that graduate from one color to another. Although shapes filled with gradients look so incredible, make sure you choose the colors that form the gradient very carefully. PowePoint’s basic gradients are all very useable since they just blend a basic color with white or black making the result lighter or darker.

Learn to use Gradient fills for selected shapes in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2016
Tagged as: Fills, Gradients, Office 2016, PowerPoint 2016, Shapes, Tutorials