Wiley Cutting Edge PowerPoint 2007 For Dummies
Contents
1. Chapter 12 Interactivity flow and navigation Amazingly interactivity flow and navigation are the most neglected parts of many PowerPoint presentations These concepts are easy to overlook because unlike a picture they aren t visible Interactivity in its basic form is the use of hyperlinks within a presenta tion to link to e Other slides in a presentation e Other documents outside a presentation such as Word files 1 Flow is the spread of ideas that evolves from one slide to the next Flows can be smooth or abrupt YY Navigation aids interactivity It is the way your presentation is set up to provide one click access for the user to view other slides in the correct order Navigation is mostly taken care of by using the PowerPoint Action Buttons but you can link from any PowerPoint object to move from one slide to the next 16 Part Powering Up PowerPoint Interactivity and linking are covered in Chapter 13 Good flow concepts are influenced by proper use of consistency and animation Consistency is covered in Chapter 4 and animation is covered in Chapter 12 Going Outside PowerPoint to Create Presentation Elements Although you might believe that all the elements of a cutting edge presentation are accessible from within PowerPoint that s not entirely true Professional presentation design houses don t want you to know the secret of using non PowerPoint elements in your presentation this knowledge2. explain next Presentation workflow The presentation workflow decides the sequence of the elements that I explain earlier in this chapter In addition it includes some more abstract ele ments such as delivery and repurposing Chapters 14 and 15 discuss these vital concepts Figure 1 4 shows a typical presentation workflow As you can see the workflow begins with concept and visualization and ends with delivery and repurposing But that s not entirely true repurposing can often be the same as the concept and visualization of another presentation That s food for thought and the stimulus for thoughts on another interest ing subject 17 18 Part I Powering Up PowerPoint Concept and Visualization Interactivity Flow Navigation Animations Transitions Sound Narration Video n Figure 1 4 Finished Presentation A typical presentation r workflow Delivery and Repurposing What Can Vou Use PowerPoint For You can use PowerPoint to create all sorts of presentations 1 Business presentations More than anything else people use PowerPoint to create presentations intended for the boardrooms and conference halls of the corporate world where people of all sorts come to see and hear content And as those in corporate corridors have discovered the most important thing is to have a PowerPoint presentation ready for every proposal and product and I should add sales and service to th
3. graphics in a separate program such as SmartDraw or Visio and bring them into PowerPoint later 14 Part I Powering Up PowerPoint Images and text always work together collectively they achieve more than the sum of each other s potential However images need to be relevant to the subject and focused using an unsuitable visual is worse than using no visual at all The same rules apply to info graphics as well PowerPoint provides many ways to present images from recolored styles effects and outlines to animations and builds Shapes Simple objects such as circles rectangles and squares can help you explain concepts so much better PowerPoint looks at the entire shape concept in a different way through its Shapes gallery The shapes within the Shapes gallery seem like regular lines and polygons but that s where the similarity ends they are very adaptable in editing and creation Shapes can also function as building blocks and form the basis of complex diagrams and illustrations Fills lines and effects Shapes pictures and even info graphics in PowerPoint can stand out from the slide by using as assortment of fill line and effect styles Most styles are found in galleries on the Ribbon tabs Sound and video PowerPoint provides many ways to incorporate sound inserted sounds event sounds transition sounds background scores and narrations PowerPoint was perhaps never intended to become a multime
4. it back into your esteemed presence gt Calibri ty 44 Ma Bg rF BIS 2 A 2 The New PowerPoint The Elements of PowerPoint When you open PowerPoint it presents you with a blank canvas that you color with your ideas and your message The brushes and paints used to transform this blank canvas into an amazing interactive medium are its ele ments of composition 1 Text Y Background images and info graphics 1 Shapes Fills lines and effects Sound and video y Animations and transitions Interactivity flow and navigation If you ve heard or read any of those Death by PowerPoint cries in the media these days that bemoan the lack of aesthetics in PowerPoint presentations shown all over the world you need to make friends with all the elements of PowerPoint so that you can use these elements more effectively to create more aesthetic PowerPoint presentations Chapter 1 PowerPointing with the Best of Them 13 ging air In the following sections I explain more about these individual elements and then follow it up with how they team together to form an entire presentation workflow I discuss each of these elements in greater depth in separate chap ters throughout this book Text Text is the soul of a presentation it relates to content like nothing else Your text could be in the form of titles subtitles bullets phrases captions and even sentences A barrage of visual con
5. store your often used commands 1 Ribbon The Ribbon comprises the area above the actual slide It replaces the menus and toolbars in earlier versions of PowerPoint 1 Tabs The Ribbon is tabbed You can access each tab by clicking the tab header or selecting a particular slide element which automatically activates one of the tabs In addition to the tabs normally visible on the Ribbon contextual tabs appear when a particular slide object is selected In Figure 1 1 you can see the Drawing Tools Format tab of the Ribbon that s a contextual tab Buttons Each of the tabs has several buttons that do something when clicked they launch a dialog box reveal a gallery change the tab itself or just do something on the slide Chapter 1 PowerPointing with the Best of Them ee a Figure 1 1 The new interface works the same way in PowerPoint as it does in the Office 2007 versions of Word and Excel i I Y Groups Buttons are arranged logically into groups For example all the paragraph formatting options are located within the Paragraph group of the Home tab of the Ribbon 1 Galleries Galleries are collections of preset choices Most of these choices are in the form of small thumbnail previews that show you how the final effects will look Many galleries can also be seen as drop down galleries so that you can see even more thumbnail previews Dialog box launcher Dialog box launchers are small arrows below so
6. your presentation e Plain color backgrounds get around that clutter problem just by being plain e Other background types such as textures gradients and pho tographs have to be more carefully chosen Test your background choice by inserting enough placeholder text in an 18 point font size to fill the entire slide area in two slides Use black text on one slide and white text on the other If you can read text on both the slides clearly your background really works If just one color works you can use that background if you make sure that you use the right colors for all other slide objects See Chapter 3 to find out more about picking the right colors Chapter 1 PowerPointing with the Best of Them 2 Ry lt P ning YY Make sure your text is large enough that it can be read even by the audience members in the last row You don t want to make anyone in the audience squint to read your slides YY Make sure that you use just the right amount of visual content to get your message across Don t use too little and certainly don t use too much e Don t add 16 pictures when a few are enough e Use only relevant content don t waste your audience s time and energy or yours for that matter on images that have nothing to do with the topic of discussion Make sure that any sounds you insert in your presentation all play at the same volume You don t want the sound on one slide to be low and then follow that
7. Chapter 1 PowerPointing with the Best of Them In This Chapter Getting used to the new PowerPoint 2007 interface Discovering PowerPoint s elements Creating structure and workflow Delving into different types of presentations Giving the audience members what they want U nlike many other applications PowerPoint is easy to figure out and to use And although PowerPoint 2007 is even more amazingly simple to use than previous versions this also means that creating terrible presenta tions is even easier Although anyone can create a PowerPoint presentation with a few words and visuals you can use PowerPoint to its complete poten tial only if you understand the composition of its elements All these elements come together to form the structure of a presentation but there s more to a PowerPoint presentation than just structure and the ele ments One of the most important ingredients is the workflow that makes up the order in which you create and add elements to your presentation This chapter first looks at the new PowerPoint 2007 interface Then it dis cusses PowerPoint s elements a presentation s structure your workflow for creating a presentation and more Although these topics cover theory more than practical application spending a little time internalizing these concepts will take you a long way toward making your finished presentations more effective and cutting edge 10 Part I Powering Up PowerPoint And t
8. at list 1 Homework projects Don t be flabbergasted if your kid asks you to help create a presentation for school Or maybe you are a kid reading this and can t understand what s so great about creating a PowerPoint pre sentation for a project Schools all over the world are discovering the virtues of PowerPoint the program lets you assemble all sorts of media such as images text and sound in one document And think about the amount of paper and ink you save by replacing that project poster with a PowerPoint presentation Chapter 1 PowerPointing with the Best of Them 9 1 Educational content Colleges and universities commonly have their own banks of presentations for every conceivable subject Some of these presentations are sold for very high prices as talks by specialized vendors and the high prices are because these talk presentations were created by highly renowned professionals Even at the high cost these talk presentations are a steal because they re the next best thing to inviting those professors to speak to your students 1 Kiosks Kiosks can display anything and everything nowadays from travel information at airports to the playlist at the coffee shop jukebox And many of those kiosk displays are actually PowerPoint presentations Religious presentations And now for the godly frontiers that projec tion of the hymn lyrics in church was likely created in PowerPoint So was that fancy s
9. dia tool nor were presentations ever imagined to reach the sophisticated levels they have attained Microsoft has tried to keep PowerPoint contemporary by adding more sound capabilities with every release This version finally makes it easier to work with sound in PowerPoint by adding a whole new Ribbon tab containing sound options As computers get more powerful and play smooth full screen video viewers expect PowerPoint to work with all sorts of video formats But that s a far cry from reality In Chapter 11 I look at workarounds that keep PowerPoint happy with all sorts of video types Chapter 1 PowerPointing with the Best of Them 15 ANG RS ar Animations and transitions Animations and transitions fulfill an important objective introducing several elements one at a time in a logical fashion to make it easier for the audience to understand a concept Keep these guidelines in mind when using anima tions and transitions 1 Animation is best used for a purpose An example would be using anima tion to illustrate a process or a result of an action If you use animation without a purpose your presentation might end up looking like an assortment of objects that appear and exit without any relevance YY Transitions can be either subdued or flashy depending on the flow of ideas being presented In either case they need to aid the flow of the presentation rather than disrupt it Animations and transitions are covered in
10. hat brings me to what I mean by the term cutting edge After all that term is part of the title of this book By cutting edge I mean using simple con cepts to create presentations that will work in all situations The cutting edge part here is the results not that I expect you to create presentations in a space satellite somewhere outside the earth s atmosphere And those types of results mean that you have to be element savvy Later in this chapter I dis cuss these elements and each of these elements is also discussed in sepa rate chapters within this book Taking a Look at PowerPoint 2007 Maybe you ve worked with PowerPoint for the last several versions of the program or you might have just started with the program Either way you ll find that PowerPoint 2007 has a new interface Gone are the menus and the toolbars In their place you see the Ribbon with all its tabs and galleries And yes you have the Mini Toolbar as well Cut the Ribbon and get started Figure 1 1 shows you the new PowerPoint interface It s actually the embodi ment of simplicity but I still explain its components because I refer to the interface all through this book YY Office Button The Office Button see Figure 1 1 is a round button placed on the top left of the interface that works almost the same way as the File menu in earlier versions of PowerPoint 1 Quick Access toolbar The Quick Access toolbar is a customizable tool bar that can
11. is often the difference between a cutting edge presentation and an ordinary one Examples of non PowerPoint elements include the following 1 Images retouched and enhanced in an image editor such as Adobe Photoshop Charts created in a dedicated charting application 1 Music and narration fine tuned amplified and normalized in a sound editor 1 Video clips rendered in a custom size and time in a video editing application 1 Animations created in a separate application such as Macromedia Flash When these non PowerPoint elements are inserted inside PowerPoint most of them can be made to behave like normal PowerPoint elements Structure and Workflow The words structure and workflow might sound a little intimidating but they are merely a way of ensuring that your presentation elements are working together Chapter 1 PowerPointing with the Best of Them SSS Figure 1 3 Atypical presentation structure a Presentation structure A typical presentation structure combines the elements I mention at the beginning of this chapter into something like what you see in Figure 1 3 Video Visuals n Transitions Sound Figure 1 3 is just an example almost every presentation has a unique struc ture depending on the content of the presentation and the audience On the other hand the presentation workflow for most presentations remains unchanged which is what I
12. lide show that displayed pictures from the missionary trip to South America 1 Government presentations PowerPoint is used everywhere in the administrative sphere Be it presidents or prime ministers or even organizations like the United Nations and its various agencies all over the world so much these days happens on a PowerPoint slide And yes when something goes wrong such as space shuttle disasters PowerPoint often is given some of that blame 1 Multimedia demos This is probably the most controversial use because PowerPoint was never intended to be used as a tool to create multime dia demos that run from CD ROM Nevertheless PowerPoint allows interactivity and navigation between slides and because so many people already have PowerPoint all those bosses decided that they might as well ask untrained office staff to put it to good use Of course you can use PowerPoint for so much more electronic greeting cards quizzes posters and even multiplication tables You re limited only by your imagination PowerPoint is a great tool to present your ideas Giving People What They Like to See The simplest secret of creating great presentations is to give audiences what they like to see If you give them anything else they re bound to complain with bouts of loud mouthed vengeance and stupidity Okay I admit that was an exaggeration They re more likely to doze off and snore loudly while you re presenting S
13. me groups that launch a related dialog box _ 1 Status bar The status bar provides information and viewing options Ribbon Quick Access Toolbar Office Button Tab Dialog launcher vais Bo u it po ing Tools L 4 Sr Ma nE zli Dh i Shape Fill H fins Calibr Heading 44 A al 2 alee ee 2 Da ie Z shape Outline 4g Replace P ide xJ rr g ri fmd Shape Effects 2 Select Clipboard Slides Fort gt Fangaph m e e e Boo BEE86 169 b we b L click to B 0 G OE Beaces Click to ac Sther Theme Fits Click to add notes Sided oft Office mefe Status bar Group Gallery 11 2 Part Powering Up PowerPoint PCS Figure 1 2 Here comes the Mini Toolbar PCS The Mini Toolbar So what is a Mini Toolbar As much as you might like that mini bar in your hotel room I promise you this one is more helpful If you select some text in PowerPoint you ll see a semitransparent floating toolbar that provides all the text formatting options you need without having to make a trip to the Home tab of the Ribbon That s the Mini Toolbar Figure 1 2 shows you the Mini Toolbar in all its resplendent glory Just move the cursor away or deselect the text and the Mini Toolbar gets sad and goes away If you want to get it back again and it s in no mood to come back you can always right click the selected text to order
14. o what do audiences like to see That s what I discuss next 20 Part I Powering Up PowerPoint ING avr Truth and sincerity More than anything else audiences want sincerity and truth Just because you put that sentence in a 48 point bold font in a contrasting color doesn t mean that your audience will believe what it says If there s something in common among audiences of any place age and sex it s that they want something they can believe and if there s even a hint that something men tioned in your presentation is gobbledygook you can wave goodbye to the remaining 999 slides in that presentation And please don t make such long presentations Of course there are rare exceptions to that rule A few centuries ago audi ences didn t believe that the earth was round or that people could find a way to fly If what you re presenting is similarly groundbreaking I ll let you put that in your next PowerPoint presentation And I m so proud that you are reading this book Never use any content that can be thought of as discriminatory toward race gender age religious beliefs weight and so on Not only will discriminatory phrases or even images reflect badly on you they ll also hijack the entire focus of your presentation Style and design To enliven your message use as many of these style and design guidelines as you can balance on a single PowerPoint slide Choose an uncluttered background for
15. tent might not be able to achieve what a single effec tive word can say sometimes a word is worth a thousand pictures Text is significant because it means you have something to say Without explicit text what you re trying to say might not come through as strongly as you want Too much text is like too much of any good thing it can be harmful For example a slide with 20 lines of teeny weeny text just doesn t work The audi ence can t read it and the presenter doesn t have time to explain that much content Anyway if you re cramming so much text on a slide you ve already lost the focus of your presentation Backgrounds images and info graphics PowerPoint uses three types of graphical elements Y Backgrounds The backdrop for your slides Backgrounds need to be understated You can create a great presentation with a plain white background On the other hand artistic backgrounds are a great way to bring a presenta tion to life The new themes in PowerPoint 2007 also let you recolor background graphics by applying new Theme Colors These are explained in more detail in Chapter 3 1 Pictures Images that you insert in slides Pictures share the stage with text Info graphics Images that combine visuals and text to make complex information and statistics easier to understand Info graphics include charts tables maps graphs diagrams organization charts timelines and flowcharts You can also create info
16. with a sound that s loud enough to wake up your ancestors Correct spelling accurate grammar and good word choice Nothing is as embarrassing and shameful as a misspelling on a slide especially considering that PowerPoint includes an excellent spell checker But even beyond the spell checker make sure that the spellings work for the country and audience you are presenting to Thus color is perfectly fine in the United States but make that colour if you re presenting in the United Kingdom or in India Avoid repeating the same word on a slide when possible For example if you see a phrase like report results in weekly reports you need to do some edit ing You can use PowerPoint s thesaurus accessible on the Review tab of the Ribbon to find alternatives if you find yourself repeating certain words Don t read the slide aloud to your audience while you re giving your presen tation Slight differences in language and wording can make all the difference Audiences want you to take the content further by sharing your experiences opinions and ideas on the subject 22 Part I Powering Up PowerPoint
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