PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Resonate on iPad: A Book That’s Now Become an Experience

When Nancy Duarte sent me a copy of her book, Resonate that has been recreated for the iPad, I knew that what I was looking through on my iPad was more than just a presentation book. In fact, this was more than a book–it was Nancy sharing her thoughts, her encounters, and her inspiration with everyone.

The folks at Duarte did post about Resonate’s new incarnation on their blog, and while I agree with them when they say “Resonate is the first interactive business book built using Apple’s iBooks Author”, I don’t think that iBooks Author is the only nuance that sets this book apart.

So what is it that sets Resonate on the iPad apart? And how did something that is so interactive happen? Also, did Resonate on the iPad happen because the iPad as a medium is a great way to share content?

The answer is both yes and no. The iPad certainly facilitated this metamorphosis of a book to an experience but when you look (notice that I used the term look rather than read) at Resonate on an iPad, you will observe that Nancy and her team at Duarte have done so much more than using the iPad as a medium! There are small touches everywhere–like when Nancy talks, or when there is an animation that’s soothing and resonating. Also, I loved the video in which sound waves create patterns using salt–yes, everything that I have discussed is available in the printed book, but then that’s just a book, this is an experience!

Also, you will notice how within the introduction video, there’s a flame or a source of light that moves almost in 3D space amongst 2D pictures (see the embedded YouTube video below). Clearly, the team at Duarte worked with this project with tons of planning and oodles of experiments. Go and get this book and enjoy–it’s not everyday that you get to look at a book, and feel an experience of this sort!

You May Also Like: Nancy Duarte on Indezine | Illuminate: Conversation with Nancy Duarte

Filed Under: Thoughts
Tagged as: Books, Duarte Design, iPad, Nancy Duarte, PowerPoint

Learn PowerPoint 2010: Animate Charts

We have already explored how you can animate any slide object, and then tweak the animation speed and animation events. Although you add animation to a chart in the same way, PowerPoint provides some extra animation options that are applicable only to charts. For example, you can animate series and categories individually as required — and you can also decide whether you want to animate the plot area or not. In this tutorial we’ll explore how to apply animation to chart and also explore the various Chart animation options in PowerPoint 2010.

Learn how to animate charts in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2010
Tagged as: Animation, Charting, PowerPoint 2010, Tutorials

Indezine News Released

Several issues ago, we discussed how silhouettes can be a great design idea. Let us explore some examples of why a silhouette can work better than typical pictures or even vector art. First of all, silhouettes are mainly neutral — you cannot identify the race or nationality of a person based on their silhouettes. This makes silhouettes a very useable form of visuals for audiences that have a large international or racial representation. Silhouettes also do not call for attention, and can work as subtle graphics that complement and sync with the speaker or presenter rather than drawing attention. Imagine you use a picture of a very beautiful or an ugly person on your slide — it is natural for the audience to look at that visual for a longer time at the expense of giving you attention!

Read the newsletter here.

Filed Under: Ezine
Tagged as: Ezine, PowerPoint

Learn PowerPoint 2011 for Mac: Crop Pictures

Once you insert a picture in your slide, there is so much you can do it to make it appear consistent with the look of your slides — you can make corrections to brightness, sharpness, and contrast values. You can also play with recolor options, and apply Photoshop style filters. However, even before you play with all these options, you must ponder and decide whether you want to use PowerPoint’s Crop options. Cropping an area removes unrequired areas, and lets you add focus to the areas of the picture that are relevant to the topic of your presentation. Cropping also lets you remove some unwanted areas.

Learn how to work with simple crop options for pictures in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.

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

Businesswoman Silhouettes for PowerPoint – 01

The businesswoman silhouettes contained within the download presentation are ready to use within your PowerPoint presentation slides. You will see them in both black and white colors — both variations are contained within two separate slides in one presentation that you can download. In addition, there are some other variations of these silhouette vectors included in the presentation which are using different fills, to help you to start with. To make these silhouettes appear coordinated with your slides, you can apply PowerPoint’s fills, lines, and effects to them.

Copy the silhouettes graphics (clip arts) of your choice from the downloaded presentation, and paste them into your PowerPoint presentation slides. All these silhouette graphics can be used and customized with Shape Styles just like any other PowerPoint shape. You can also paste them into a Word document, an Excel worksheet, or any other program.

Download and use this presentation.

Filed Under: Presentation Bank
Tagged as: Graphics, PowerPoint, Presentation Samples