PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

PresenterMedia Content and More: Conversation with Art Holden

Art Holden has been in the animation and presentation industry since 1996. He helped start Animation Factory in 1997 and served as general manager of Animation Factory for thirteen years. He currently lives in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, USA, and works with PresenterMedia, a media content creating company.

In this conversation, Art discusses the new additions at PresenterMedia and the closure of Microsoft’s Clip Art Gallery.

Geetesh: It’s been a long while since we interviewed you. Can you tell us more about what’s new at PresenterMedia, such as your animation and video customizers?

Art: PresenterMedia has been working on expanding the definition of clip art. A generic image can distract and dilute the main ideas, whereas the right image can drive home the point and maintain an audience’s attention.

By building a library of modifiable imagery, we are striving to do away with tired, generic clip art. Our diverse collection provides active, dynamic imagery that fits with a presenter’s message and design style.

For example, you can extend your branding and message right into the image or animation. Include your logo as part of a clip art image, add your own message to an animated video background, or change colors to match your company’s design style.

PresenterMedia does not require any additional software to install and works right inside your web browser, so you can use our tools from any location.

In the future, we will be expanding our custom design templates to include real people and live action video as well as several new features I can’t talk about yet.

Geetesh: Microsoft no longer provides the immensely popular Clip Art Gallery on Office.com, or even within Office applications. How is PresenterMedia positioned to provide this missing link to users?

Art: I feel that Microsoft did away with their clip art library for the very reasons we are striving to expand the customization features of ours. Many of the clips from the Microsoft Online library were dated and had appeared in millions of other PowerPoint presentations. It was instantly recognizable when a presenter was using an image from the Microsoft Clip Art Gallery.

We want to provide imagery that reinforces the presenter’s message, not just fills up empty space on a slide. With many of our clip art, animations, and video projects, two different presenters can easily create two completely different designs. By including their logos, main subject points, or unique messages directly in our media, they are assured of original images that completely compliment their own presentation.

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: Art Holden, Clip Media, Design, Interviews, PowerPoint, PresenterMedia

Adobe Presenter: Create PDFs containing Animation and Multimedia

Very few people are aware that Adobe’s PDF files actually support movement and multimedia! Yes, you can have animations and transitions within PDFs, and also these PDFs can contain audio and video files. So why do the PDFs typically created from within PowerPoint using PowerPoint’s built-in PDF output — or even created using Adobe’s Acrobat Pro program not contain these niceties? Was that a little confusing? Let’s make this easier. Imagine you have a PowerPoint presentation that has some animation and an embedded video clip. Convert that to a PDF and all the movement and multimedia is lost! The solution is not very obvious, but Adobe creates a PowerPoint add-in called Adobe Presenter — this lets you directly publish your presentation into a PDF with all the movement and multimedia preserved.

Learn how to create PDFs containing animations and multimedia within PowerPoint using Adobe Presenter.

Filed Under: Add-ins
Tagged as: Add-in, Adobe Presenter, PowerPoint, Tutorials

Learn PowerPoint 2011 for Mac: Adding and Renaming Sections

Presentations with a large number of slides may be a challenge for managing unless they are logically divided into Sections. Even presentations that do not have a large number of slides can benefit from Sections. However, just dividing slides into Sections will not achieve much unless you create and name these Sections in a proper manner to represent what the slides within each Section contain. In this tutorial, let us learn how to add Sections, and also how to rename them.

Learn how to add and rename sections in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2011
Tagged as: Office for Mac, PowerPoint 2011, Slide Management, Tutorials

Pond5: Search and Download Public Domain Content

Finding perfect media for a presentation is no piece of cake, not to speak of being expensive as well. Although there are a wide range of search engines that are capable of pulling up tons of information we need, there’s always the hidden caveat that such content cannot be legally used! Yes, there is always the sword of Damocles hanging over your head that a restrictive but invisible license may be applied to the content you find via search engines, which later may result in copyright violations, and even legal headaches. That brings us to the topic of this article – and that is how you can search and download Public Domain content via Pond5.

Explore, search and download Pond5’s Public Domain content.

Filed Under: Clip Media
Tagged as: Clip Media, Design, Graphics, PowerPoint, Tutorials

Learn PowerPoint 2010 for Windows: Reuse Slides Through Drag and Drop

Previously we explored how reusing your existing slides can be a great help, since it saves so much of your time. While bringing up the Reuse Slides task pane enables you to add selected slides to the active presentation, there is another easier and more intuitive way to reuse your slides. You can drag selected slides from the source presentation and drop them within the newer presentation. In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to reuse slides through this drag and drop process within PowerPoint 2010 for Windows.

Learn how to reuse slides via drag and drop in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2010
Tagged as: PowerPoint 2010, Slide Management, Tutorials