PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Learn PowerPoint 2013 for Windows: Inserting New Placeholders in Slide Layouts

In PowerPoint a placeholder is a boilerplate container that you can use to fill in with some sort of content. When you launch PowerPoint, you will see those distinctive boxes that invite you to add some content — haven’t you noticed the “Click to add title” suggestions? All these boxes are placeholders — when selected, these boxes have a dotted border around them. Each of the default layouts comprises a collection of various placeholders — if none of the available layouts work for you, you can create your own layout with custom placeholders.

Learn how to add new placeholders within slide layouts in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2013
Tagged as: Masters, PowerPoint 2013, Templates, Tutorials

Clichés: Teamwork Pictures in PowerPoint

Rob’s presentation had this picture concept and so did Sam’s – and so do countless other slides. What’s this picture concept that populates so many slides? Why is it so popular? And more importantly–why is it so over-used? First of all, let’s admit that the reason why a picture concept gets clichéd is because it is good to start with, but then, it’s too good for its own existence. Rampant overuse means that the emotions that this picture concept evoked do not work anymore, and that’s exactly what happened with the teamwork picture that showed many, many hands placed together. And now, just because some people over-used the concept, you have to find, create, and use newer visual concepts to cater to that same emotion!

Learn why teamwork pictures such as hands placed together are so clichéd, and what you can do about it.

Filed Under: Clip Media
Tagged as: Clichés, Design, Graphics, Opinion, Pictures, Presentation Skills, Teamwork, Visuals

Learn PowerPoint 2013 for Windows: Add New Slide Layouts

With the various Slide Layouts in PowerPoint you can create good looking slides. For example, you can use the ready-made layouts available that contain pictures or charts or you could use a separate layout for the opening slide. While duplicating and editing Slide Layouts is a great way to make small changes, it’s not the same as creating a Slide Layout from scratch. As an analogy, duplicating and editing a Slide Layout is more like using a coloring book to fill color between the lines of pre-drawn art — but creating your Slide Layout from scratch is more like starting with a blank sheet of paper and drawing your art before you start coloring between the lines. You can decide which of these approaches works best for you.

Learn how to add a new Slide Layout in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2013
Tagged as: Masters, PowerPoint 2013, Templates, Tutorials

The Encyclopedia of Slide Layouts: Conversation with Dr. Andrew Abela

  Dr. Andrew Abela is the Dean of the School of Business & Economics at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. In addition to co-authoring The Encyclopedia of Slide Layouts, with Paul Radich, he has written Advanced Presentations by Design, currently in its second edition, The Presentation: A Story About Successful Communication with Very Few Slides, and co-edited A Catechism for Business, with Dr. Joe Capizzi. His academic research has been published in the Journal of Marketing, the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, the Journal of Business Ethics, and several other journals. He provides consulting and training to major global corporations, including JPMorganChase and Microsoft.

In this conversation, Andrew discusses his new book, The Encyclopedia of Slide Layouts.

Geetesh: Your new book, The Encyclopedia of Slide Layouts is a comprehensive resource, but it is also a reference to explore that will help create better slides. This is not something that you can write in a moderate amount of time — so what prompted you to take up such a huge challenge?

Andrew: The Extreme Presentation workshop, which both Paul (Radich, my coauthor) and I teach, always receives strongly positive reviews whenever we deliver it. But there was one question that did come up often. In the workshop, we draw a distinction between what we call “Ballroom Style” presentations, with pictures and very few words, and “Conference Room Style” presentations, which are more graphical but have a lot more detail on them.

Andrew: The Extreme Presentation workshop, which both Paul (Radich, my coauthor) and I teach, always receives strongly positive reviews whenever we deliver it. But there was one question that did come up often. In the workshop, we draw a distinction between what we call “Ballroom Style” presentations, with pictures and very few words, and “Conference Room Style” presentations, which are more graphical but have a lot more detail on them. We make a very strong case that when you’re trying to sell an idea or product, or persuade someone, then a Conference Room Style presentation is more effective. Participants agree, but then they ask us for more examples of Conference Room Style presentations – which is why we came up with the idea of the book.

Frankly, if someone had told us that it would take us five years to gather all the examples in the book, and collect all the necessary permissions to publish them, we might not have been so enthusiastic…! But we’re glad we did it.

Geetesh: For all layouts that you explain, you also provide links to resources through which readers can get a ready-to-use sample that they can use as a starting point. Tell us about this feature and other interesting nuances – or you can share a behind-the-scenes anecdote?

Andrew: Yes, we wanted to make it easy for readers to create slides like the ones we profile in the book, so each chapter contains recommended sources for free and subscription sources of slide templates. One of our readers then wrote to us and said “couldn’t you make all those links available electronically?” So we created the “electronic slide chooser” in Prezi:

What people tell us about the book is that it’s great for flipping through to get good ideas for how to lay out a slide so that it passes the “squint test” (the layout of the slide reinforces the main message of the slide, so that your audience immediately grasps the main message). Slide layout is your single most powerful design feature, but most people ignore it, using instead an undifferentiated list of bullets.

See Also: Advanced Presentations by Design: An Interview with Dr. Andrew Abela | The Encyclopedia of Slide Layouts: Conversation with Paul J. Radich

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: Andrew Abela, Books, Design, Interviews, PowerPoint

Learn PowerPoint 2013 for Windows: Duplicate, Rename, and Edit Slide Layouts

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. While these available layouts seem to cover most types of slides, you may sometimes want to create a new layout based on your individual requirements.

Learn how to duplicate, rename, and edit slide layouts in PowerPoint 2013 Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2013
Tagged as: Masters, PowerPoint 2013, Templates, Tutorials