PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

PowerPoint for Court: Conversation with Herb Rubinstein

Herb Rubinstein has been involved in computer graphics for over 15 years as founder and CEO of ReGraphix, an award winning creative house for graphics and design. The past few years, Mr. Rubinstein has taken his presentation graphics experience and applied it to developing presentation techniques for the Courtroom. He has worked with the FBI, DEA, U.S. Customs Service and other government agencies, as well as many law firms across United States. In this conversation, Herb talks about his book, PowerPoint For Court.

Geetesh: Tell us more about your book, PowerPoint For Court and how can it help PowerPoint users in the legal profession.

Herb: I created PowerPoint for Court almost 10 years ago. At that time there was very little written about presenting digital material in a court of law. Since then there is much more material available but not that much concerning the actual presentation of electronic material in court.

Many use Document Management systems like Sanction and Verdict. Those programs are designed to easily access and display documents only when it is time to display a presentation of some sort, they usually call up PowerPoint to do the heavy lifting.

There is so much more digital material out there now than there was even a few years ago. With surveillance cameras everywhere, with most cell phones capable of recording video all this has translated into a wealth of digital material that needs to be presented in a court of law in a compelling and easy to understand manner.

PowerPoint has evolved too! The latest versions of PowerPoint have some powerful features for the legal community.

One feature that is overlooked or the power of it is not properly understood. That is the Photo Album Feature.

Let’s say you are putting together a “Day in the Life” presentation to show how your client was affected by his accident. You may have a large quantity of pictures that you want to present with a caption or explanatory text nicely formatted on each one.

With the Photo Album feature, you simply put all the photos that you want in that presentation in one folder, you can arrange them by simply naming them in numerical order, then designate that folder in Photo Album and PowerPoint creates a slide for each photo, centers the photo and allows space for you to annotate or add a caption. This alone can save you hours of tedious slide presentation. It will organize hundreds of photos in a couple of minutes!

Geetesh: What sets PowerPoint presentations created for legal use as different from those created for conventional, business use?

Herb: In my book, PowerPoint For Court, my focus is on legal presentations. Business presentations are a bit different as we have more leeway as to formatting and graphic design.

Let me illustrate the difference: years ago I was asked to produce a Cast of Characters exhibit (my very first courtroom graphics project). I produced a nice slide with pics of the 10 or so defendants. And for the slide background, I used a blow-up of a federal prison. Boy did I get in trouble for that! The judge blew his top. In a courtroom setting, we can’t use any kind of prejudicial graphics.

PowerPoint for Court is updated every year and comes with five (5) years of email support. I personally answer any of your legal presentation questions.

Filed Under: Interviews
Tagged as: Books, Herb Rubinstein, Interviews, Legal, PowerPoint

Learn PowerPoint 2010 for Windows: Advanced Reflection Options In PowerPoint

You have already seen how to apply reflection effects to the shapes in PowerPoint 2010. After you apply a reflection effect to a shape, you can edit the reflection properties to suit your creative freedom — for instance, you can change the transparency, blur, distance etc. of the reflection, as you will learn in this tutorial.

Learn how you can make changes to the reflection effects applied to shapes in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2010
Tagged as: Effects, PowerPoint 2010, Shapes, Tutorials

Casulo: Conversation with Bernardo Castello Branco

Bernardo Castello Branco graduated in Linguistics from the University of São Paulo, Brazil. Bernardo started his career as an art director at São Paulo’s advertising agency CBBA-Propeg. In 1999, he became co-founder and director of Casulo – Digital Design, a multimedia design agency. In mid-2000, meeting the frequent requests of advertising agencies and direct clients, Casulo started to develop and design presentations. As this business area consolidated as an important income source, Bernardo and his partners, created in 2010 an independent new business unit: Casulo – Winning Presentations.

n this conversation, Bernardo talks about PowerPoint design, and his firm Casulo.

Geetesh: What are your perceptions on PowerPoint design, and is this branch of graphic design finally getting credit as a recognized, art form?

Bernardo: Presentation design and PowerPoint, as a design tool, were always been undervalued in the graphic design and art world. Certainly due to its apparent simplicity of use and effects, accessible to almost everyone, very few in the professional environment gave it the attention it really deserved.

More recently, thanks to the emergence of well designed slides by presentation design agencies which are presenting higher-level work in the market, there has been a marked increase in the quality and appreciation of slide design. With talent and creativity — and thanks to the newest multimedia and sharing capabilities of its new 2010 version, PowerPoint is on a new path to a well deserved recognition.

Geetesh: Tell us about the PowerPoint design that Casulo creates, and what are the unique facets that sets presentation design in Brazil apart from work done elsewhere in the world.

Bernardo: At Casulo, we have always appreciated the artistic and creative faculties because we believe in its major role in visual communication, and of course in presentation design, where PowerPoint reigns as tool.

In Brazil, design is something very well accepted and even highly cultivated. In recent years Brazilian design has grown and consolidated, being recognized worldwide as modern and matured, with its own style and personality. Our references are the aesthetics of a still young and positive country, which greatly believes in the future and is widely open to innovation, assimilating all the information that comes from other places (we value the work developed by Portuguese Tribe Presentations) and introducing its own rich and varied cultural aspects.

Naturally, this melange has spread to the Brazilian presentations design sphere and its major delivery tool: PowerPoint, clearly adding value, quality and personality to the work produced here.

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: Design, Interviews, PowerPoint, Presentation Samples

Learn PowerPoint 2010 for Windows: Apply Reflection Effects to Shapes In PowerPoint

This tutorial is a part of the series on Shape Effects in PowerPoint 2010. You have already explored the preset effects available, and also how you can apply a shadow effect to any selected shape. In this tutorial, I’ll show you how you can quickly add a reflection to a shape.

Learn how to apply Reflection effects to a selected shape(s) in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2010
Tagged as: Effects, PowerPoint 2010, Shapes, Tutorials

Learn PowerPoint 2010 for Windows: Edit Points – Open and Close Paths in PowerPoint

The Shapes gallery in PowerPoint consist various shapes, both open and closed. Most of the shapes in this gallery are closed shapes (rectangle, ellipse, and triangle are some of the closed shapes). There are also a few open shapes such as the straight point to point line. Some other tools let you create both open and closed shapes — these are the Freeform Line, Curve, and Scribble tools. In addition, you can convert any closed shape to an open shape and vice versa, as you will learn in this tutorial.

Learn how you can open and close paths for shapes in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2010
Tagged as: Lines, PowerPoint 2010, Shapes, Tutorials