PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

MLC Add-in for PowerPoint: Conversation with Maurizio La Cava

    Maurizio La Cava is a digital entrepreneur, marketer, blogger, public speaker, presentation design guru, and Founder at MLC-Design.

He is also the author of Lean Presentation Design, a top-rated freelancer, and a Professor at the European Institute of Design in Milan. His favorite quote is “Time is free, but it’s priceless.”

In this conversation, Maurizio talks about his MLC add-in for PowerPoint.

Geetesh: Maurizio, can you tell us more about your MLC add-in for PowerPoint? What motivated you to create the MLC add-in?

Maurizio: After several years working in presentation design with hundreds of presentations under your belt, you begin noticing commonalities in your client’s needs. The main thing I noticed is that people often waste a huge amount of time crafting their presentations and finally, they come up with poor results. In my experience, this happens because:

1. They do not have basic knowledge about presentation design techniques, and they do not learn them because they think those techniques are for designers only.
2. They are extremely slow in PowerPoint because they have never optimized their most common actions.

In order to solve these two main problems, I decided to:

1. Write a book about Lean Presentation Design filling it with a handful tips and tricks easy to use for non-designer PowerPointers (recommended for managers, freelancers, marketers, startuppers, salesmen)
2. Develop a new MLC PowerPoint add-in that includes custom functionalities that boost your productivity in the day-by-day presentation work.

The MLC PowerPoint add-in, in its very first version three years ago, was born to improve my own productivity, and it only had three basic functions. I kept mapping my actions on PowerPoint during the years and analyzing the results backward. In the process, I’ve found stunning insights!

I noticed that there are a few tasks (roughly 20%) that account for the 80% of the time you waste making slides. Some of those tasks could be easily solved by learning shortcuts in PowerPoint. Some others required specific new functions that PowerPoint does not offer. And that’s where the MLC PowerPoint add-in helps with its top-notch functionalities that will boost anyone’s “PowerPointing” efficiency.

Geetesh: Can you share some feedback, trivia, or a story about how people are using the MLC add-in?

Maurizio: Here are some quotes from users of the MLC add-in for PowerPoint:

I’m a presentation designer, and I spend 10-12 hours daily working on PowerPoint. I’ve just found the MLC add-in, and it makes my life much easier! The MLC add-in includes all my often-used functions, so that I do not have to click many steps to get what I need, but I can just use the MLC add-in to complete it in one click.

As you know that one part of PowerPoint work is to align the elements to get them into the right and nice position, and I love that the MLC add-in includes all necessary functions for object alignment. They also include a function to swap objects and make objects the same size. These would take some time to complete without this add-in.

In summary, I love it, and I think all PowerPoint users should not miss this add-in.

N. Jatauron
Senior Presentation Designer

Just the day after I have downloaded and installed the add-in, I have intensively used it.

The feature of switching the positions of two shapes has saved my day! Really, a very nice feature, thank you for that. Also, the features Same Height and Same Width have been proven as extremely helpful.

J. Krüger
Diplom-Informatiker Counsel

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: Add-in, Interviews, Maurizio La Cava, PowerPoint

PowerPoint and Presenting News: March 8, 2016

Have you seen a presenter jumping slides, going straight from the second slide to the second-last slide? We talk about solutions in our Jumping Slides article. Serge Starenko talks about chart and diagram templates on PoweredTemplate in an exclusive conversation. We also have more exclusive conversations with Simon Morton, who talks about the Think, Act and Deliver Differently in partnership with Microsoft. We also feature “P-Spice” Lia, who talks about her amazing PowerPoint animations, and her Spicy Slide Pack for PowerPoint.

PowerPoint 2016 for Windows users can learn about changing Background Styles for Slide Layouts. PowerPoint 2013 for Windows users can learn about finding missing Themes! Office Mix is a PowerPoint add-in from Microsoft. Read an intro and learn how you can install Office Mix. Sway users can explore Determining Authors. Finally, do not miss the new discussions and templates of this week.

Read Indezine’s PowerPoint and Presenting News.

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

Duplicate, Rename, and Edit Slide Layouts in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows

All slides within PowerPoint are based on one of the available Slide Layouts (we call these just layouts for the rest of this tutorial). These layouts can be chosen when you add a new slide or you can even change the layout of your existing slides — both these options are accessible from the Home tab of the Ribbon. Click the down-arrow on the New Slide button to get a drop-down gallery. Click any of the layout thumbnails here, and you end up adding a new slide based on that layout.

Learn how to duplicate, rename, and edit Slide Layouts in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2016
Tagged as: Layouts, Office 2016, PowerPoint 2016, Slide Layouts, Slide Masters, Templates, Themes, Tutorials

Visual Design Solutions: Conversation with Connie Malamed

Connie Malamed is a consultant, author, and speaker in the fields of online learning, visual communication, and information design. She has helped nonprofit, government, and corporate clients transform their content into interactive learning experiences for more than 20 years. Connie is the author of Visual Design Solutions and Visual Language for Designers. She publishes The eLearning Coach website and podcast. Connie has degrees in art education and instructional design.

In this conversation, Connie talks about her new book, Visual Design Solutions.

Geetesh: Connie, there are so many design books, as you mention in the opening pages of your new book. So, what motivated you to author Visual Design Solutions: Principles and Creative Inspiration for Learning Professionals? Tell us more.

Connie: Yes. There are so many wonderful and useful graphic design books. I have quite a large collection myself. But these books mainly focus on the design of company branding, brochures, advertising, newsletters, and the like. In fact, to many people, the term “graphic design” is associated with these formats.

In light of this, I couldn’t help but notice a lack of resources and references for the visual design of learning materials, such as eLearning and slides. I wrote Visual Design Solutions to fill this gap. I not only present design principles, but I discuss how they benefit learning.

Instructional designers, trainers, and educators look at the world from a unique perspective, and that’s the perspective from which I wrote the book. We want to communicate in a way that enhances comprehension and improves retention. We want people to use our materials to improve their skills. This is a different mindset than an advertiser who is designing for potential consumers. Although the design principles are similar, the intent is different.

Geetesh: How is Learning/eLearning Design different than or similar to conventional Graphic Design?

Connie: In the design of learning materials, we have many constraints. Although we need to create an aesthetic experience to motivate learners, our main focus is on clarity, which enhances comprehension. We must use visual cues so learners won’t miss out on information. And we must find visual metaphors to help people learn.

For eLearning, we design for interactive activities and for navigation. We design for simulations, scenarios, and characters speaking to each other. In many ways, the visual design needs of the learning professional are quite different than those of the conventional graphic designer.

Symmetry

Asymmetry

Geetesh: Can the principles in your book work well for designers who create slides in PowerPoint and other similar programs?

Connie: I do think the principles work well for slide creation, and I had this in mind while writing the book. In-person training often relies on slides. And presentation slides are often educational. So, when I discuss graphic space, typography, working with images, color principles, unity, and grouping, the concepts are as true for slides as they are for eLearning and job aids.

Alternative to Bullets 01

Alternative to Bullets 02

The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company.

Filed Under: Interviews
Tagged as: Books, Connie Malamed, Design, Diagrams, Graphics, Interviews, Visuals

St. Patrick’s Day PowerPoint Presentation

This ready-to-use presentation has slides about St. Patrick’s Day, its origins and its customs.

Download and use these slides.

Filed Under: Events
Tagged as: Events, PowerPoint, Presentation Samples, St. Patrick's Day