How do most business professionals start creating their PowerPoint slides? They open a previous presentation and copy a few slides into a new file, making sure to click the Keep Source Formatting option so the template from the previous file gets applied. This is a big mistake. You may get an old version of the…
Category: Slide Design
Making presentations more accessible; Issue #429 December 11 2018
Last week I was working with an organization who has a library of graphics that they encourage their staff to use. This gives a consistency to the look of their presentations. Each graphic represents a specific role, service, or element of their business. When I was reviewing the graphics, I noticed that the graphics did…
Getting Designer ideas without Office 365 at work; Issue #422 September 4 2018
Software and services are always looking for ways to improve our work, and PowerPoint is no different. About two years ago PowerPoint introduced a feature called Designer. This feature interprets the content on your slide as you create it and suggests different layouts to improve the look of the slide. Designer suggests a more visual…
Capitalization of Headlines; Issue #413 May 1, 2018
After my customized workshops, one of the key take-aways people say they will implement is to write headlines for their slides instead of titles. A headline is a summary of the key message you want the audience to understand from this slide. It forces you to be clear on that message and restricts you to…
Using your organization’s template; Issue #410 March 20, 2018
Almost every organization has a PowerPoint template that is used to ensure consistency with branding standards such as colors, fonts, etc. Presenters are expected to use this template for every presentation. Most presenters are not given any guidance on how to use this template so they end up using one of two approaches. They may…
Design advice corporate presenters can ignore; Issue #390 May 30, 2017
I am friends with many professional presentation designers. They do great work. If you want to hire a presentation designer, check out the Presentation Guild at www.PresentationGuild.org. These professionals understand the needs of corporate presenters. Why do I recommend these professionals and not just any designer? Because there is advice from some designers that you…
Testing how a slide looks to someone with color deficiency; Issue #330 February 3, 2015
For many years in my workshops I have been discussing the importance of considering how colors look to people who have color deficiency. The term many people commonly use is color blindness, but that is not accurate. Some people truly can’t see the colors red and green, but more commonly the colors don’t look the…
Creating slides that print well in B&W; Issue #309 April 15, 2014
One of the participants at last Thursday’s workshop asked how the colorful charts and visuals I was showing would work when printed in grayscale on a black and white laser printer. For those who usually present with printed slides instead of projecting them on a screen, this is a real concern. Here is the issue…
Should you switch to 16:9 slides?; Issue #292 August 6, 2013
One of the big changes in the latest version of PowerPoint is that the default aspect ratio (ratio of width to height) for slides is 16:9. In all previous versions, the default aspect ratio was 4:3. Why the change? Because widescreen formats are becoming more popular for projectors and TVs used in presentations. So should…
Creating a style guide to keep the look of slides consistent in an organization
Many of you will be familiar with the idea of using a template to give your slides a common look. A Master Slide (in combination with a Theme in PowerPoint 2007 and later) sets the background color, text colors and fonts and any branding on the slide. This way, every slide has a consistent look…