Make Visually Stunning PowerPoints: Tips &

Tricks

Introduction................................................................................................................2

Recommended Reading..........................................................................................2

A Good Rule of Thumb.............................................................................................2

Don’t Use These Tips for Evil...................................................................................2

Slide Master................................................................................................................3

Colors...................................................................................................................... 3

Fonts....................................................................................................................... 3

Quick Styles.............................................................................................................3

Layouts....................................................................................................................3

Text............................................................................................................................ 5

Fills and Outlines.....................................................................................................5

Autoshapes................................................................................................................. 6

Positioning Tricks....................................................................................................6

Pictures...................................................................................................................... 8

Animations.................................................................................................................9

Four animation types..............................................................................................9

Animation Pane.....................................................................................................10

Transitions.............................................................................................................10

Action Buttons..........................................................................................................11

Additional Resources................................................................................................12

IntroductionThe goal of this class is not to teach you the theory behind good slide design. There are many excellent resources, books, presentations, video, that can teach you the basic concepts you’ll need to create great looking slides. The focus of this class is on what you do after you understand the theoretical stuff. We’ll focus on how to use PowerPoint as an expert user, and different techniques that will help elevate your slide deck.

Recommended ReadingIf you’re looking for more on slide design theory I would recommend Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds or slide:ology by Nancy Duarte. Both are well-respected presenters and both books are easy to digest. While I like Presentation Zen, I encourage you to remember Garr’s point that the message is most important, not the exact way you present. So even though Garr’s personal style is to use big full color stock photos on every slide, that’s not the only way to make a great presentation.

A Good Rule of ThumbThink of each slide as a billboard. Text and graphics should be large enough that they can be easily interpreted from a distance (the back of your meeting room) and the message should be simple enough that it can be understand in only a few seconds. You want the audience focused on what you’re saying, not trying to read everything on a densely filled slide.

Don’t Use These Tips for Evil.PowerPoint is just a tool; its effectiveness depends entirely on how you chose to use it. When used thoughtfully and in moderation the tips shared in this class will enhance your presentation. If you slap tons of colorful effects and animations on all your slides in an effort to make them “cool” you’ll probably end up with something worse than when you started.

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Slide MasterThe Slide Master (View ribbon > Slide Master button) has settings that effect all slides in the presentation. You can also make changes to individual slide layouts: adding background graphics, setting placeholders, etc.

ColorsThe color palette that appears when you change colors for text, shapes, and lines is determined by the slide master color setting. This also decides the color options for quick styles, smart art, tables, and charts. There are several built-in color themes to choose from or you can also create your own custom set.

FontsYou can select a pair of fonts as part of the slide master theme. One font will be used in all title placeholders, and the other will be used for all other text. Again, there are several built-in font pairs to choose from or you can create a custom pair using

any fonts installed on your machine. Setting these default fonts is helpful because then every text box you create will always use your theme font.

Quick StylesThe quick style options that appear for shapes are also set in the slide master under “Effects”. The differences between the available options are subtle, so I’d recommend creating a test slide to better see the differences. I’ve never changed this from the default setting in any of

my presentations.

LayoutsThe default slide master comes with a large variety of layouts, which you can edit, or you can create layouts from scratch. The most common layout people use has a title and a content placeholder (see screenshot at right). You can also use placeholders that only accept specific types of content. Any changes you make to a selected layout will be reflected

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in all slides in your presentation that use that layout. So if I added a picture of a shark to this layout, every slide in my presentation using that layout would now have a picture of a shark on it.

LimitationsAny images, text, or shapes applied to the layout will appear in all slides using that layout and cannot be changed on those individual slides. So if I create a layout with a picture of a shark, when I use that layout for a slide I can’t edit the picture in any way, including moving it to the right side of the title.

That’s why you should only put things in the master that really ought to go on most/every slide of your presentation. Content placeholders can be edited on layouts to change fonts and styling. I like to change the bullet styles to a Wingding, although I try to rarely use bullets on my slides.

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TextDon’t immediately jump to the built-in WordArt styles when you want to jazz up your text. There are a range of visual effects that can be added to create your own unique word art.

Most of these options are self-explanatory, and you’ll learn best by playing around with them. Find them under Drawing Tools (Format) ribbon > Text Effects.

Fills and OutlinesYou can add excitement and create additional contrast with the slide background by added a text outline. You can also get very creative with the text fill. In addition to changing the color, you can fill the text with a gradient, or even an image. The image trick can

be nice with texture images, so your text looks like it’s cut from wood or grown out of grass.

Reminders:

Once you settle on a style you like use the Format Painter tool ( ) to quickly apply it to other text on your slides.

Remember that changing the font style can do a lot to make text stand out, just don’t include too many fonts in a single presentation or it will look hectic and confused.

Use the 3-D Rotation and Transform effects cautiously! They inherently make it more difficult to read the text, so only use it occasionally and when it adds to your message.

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AutoshapesMost people are familiar with autoshapes, but many don’t know about the curved

line and freeform tools ( ). These two options let you create any line or shape you could ever want. If the standard shapes work, then by all means use those, but if you’ve ever found yourself thinking “I wish PowerPoint had this shape,” then the freeform tool is for you.

Colors and EffectsAll of the color and effect options available for text are also available for Autoshapes. Additionally, you have the quick style options you set up in your slide master. For more info see the Text and Slide Master sections that appeared earlier in this training companion.

I also like to add transparency to autoshapes so they are semi-transparent. Do this by selecting the object > Fill Color > More Fill Colors > there’s a slider for transparency at the bottom.

Positioning TricksThe following tricks work with any selectable object on the slide (text, autoshapes, images, and any combination of them) I just chose to talk about these options here.

GroupingWhen working with a large number of objects, or elements that you want to move together as one, use grouping. Select all of the objects you wish to group and press Ctrl +g. You can also group objects using menu options under

the Arrange button, or by right-clicking on one of the objects you have selected. To ungroup a group of objects so you can work with them again individually, press Ctrl + Shift + g, or select ungroup from the same menus.

Tip! Instead of using Ctrl + c and Ctrl + v to copy and paste, do it in one command with Ctrl + d to duplicate.

AlignAlign works in two ways, dependent on whether you have a single object selected or multiple objects. If a single object is selected, it will be aligned relative to the slide. So clicking Align > Center would align it with the center of the slide.

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When multiple objects are selected the alignment works relative to all of the selected objects. So with three staggered blocks selected, as in the image below, I can choose to align vertically or horizontally. Creating strong alignments in your slides will make them look polished and well-designed.

DistributeThe Arrange > Distribute options only work when 3 or more objects are selected. Using the fixed end points of the object farthest to the left and object farthest to the right it adjusts the middle objects so they are evenly spaced. This can be done both horizontally and vertically as shown below.

RotateYou can use the Arrange > Rotate options to rotate an object by 90 degree increments and flip it horizontally or vertically. By using the green handle that appears when you select an object you can rotate it arbitrarily to any angle you choose. If you right-click on the object and select Format Shape > under the Size menu you can enter a specific number of degrees by which to rotate the object.

Tip! The Format Painter ( ) works with text, but it also works with autoshapes and images.

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PicturesJust like with autoshapes, all of the outline and effects options available for text are also available for pictures. See the text section for a brief overview of the options.

Tip! If you have a folder open with all of your images you can just drag and drop them from Windows into your PowerPoint slide.

Simple EditingPowerPoint has some simple editing tools that I often use: resize, crop, and recolor. If you want to do anything more complex than that I suggest using the Gimp or another image editing software application. I like recolor because the options are based on the theme color you set in your slide master, so you can quickly and easily create watermark images for your slides.

Crop to ShapeThis is an awesome trick! It lets you crop an image to any autoshape (except freeform). See the examples at right, where an image was cropped using the heart and explosion autoshapes. You can use this in combination with other effects like outlines or shadows or recoloring.

Reset PictureThis option on the Picture Tools > Format ribbon will remove all formatting you have applied to the

selected image. If you apply several different effects and decide you don’t like the outcome, you can click this button to start over. This will not remove cropping (unless it was crop to shape) and it will not undo resizing. There’s a hidden option “Reset Picture & Size” that will undo both cropping and resizing to restore the image to how it appeared when you first inserted it in the slide.

Picture Layouts This tool works in the same way as SmartArt.

Select several images and then choose Picture Layout from the Picture Tools > Format ribbon. There are several options to pick from and most include textboxes. It provides an easy way to make complex layouts. The available colors and styles for the layouts are determined by the slide master.

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AnimationsAnimations get a bad reputation because we’ve all seen them used poorly, especially the ones like “checkerboard” that have been in PowerPoint since I started using it in 1997. If you limit yourself to a few animations and use them wisely they can greatly enhance your message. I enjoy working with animations because I see it as making a movie to tell a story. There’s definitely a learning curve for designing complex animation sequences because there is so much flexibility in how you do it. It would be impossible to cover all of the options here, so I’ll try to highlight the most important ones. The best way to learn is to play around with it when you have some time.

Four animation types

EntranceEntrance effects control when/how an object first appears on the slide. The object is invisible on the slide until the entrance effect occurs. You can occasionally use an exciting entrance, but I usually stick with the following: Appear, Fade, Float In, and Wipe. Some effects have Effect Options that let you further customize the direction of the effect, for example, with Float In you can choose either Float Up or Float Down.

EmphasisEmphasis effects do nothing to change when an object appears, they simple change some feature of the object. Most of the options relate to color, but you can also grow/shrink objects, wiggle, and spin. I rarely use these effects on their own; typically I include them in parallel with other effects as part of a sequence.

ExitExit effects are the opposite of entrance effects. Once the Exit effect plays the object will no longer be visible on the slide. I use the same list of effects for exits: Appear, Fade, Float In, and Wipe.

Motion PathMotion Paths are the most exciting animation option in my opinion. There are several pre-defined paths: line, arc, curve, shapes, loops, or custom paths. Similar to the freeform autoshape tool, the custom path lets you create any shape you want. There are some advanced editing options with the custom path that can give you expert control by editing individual points in the path.

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CombinationsNow that you know about each individual type of animation, I hope you can see that the real power in animation is combining the different effects in sequence or in parallel to tell a story. A single object can have any number of animations applied to it. Just remember to select “Add Animation” or you’ll be changing the current effect.

Animation PaneIf you’re serious about animations, then the Animation Pane should become your best friend. It shows the current order the animations will play in, and lets you reorder them by clicking and dragging. For each animation you can change whether it starts on mouse click, with the previous animation, or after the previous animation. You can also set the duration of the animation (how long it lasts from start to finish) and the delay (how long it waits to actually start).

Look at the slides from this class for examples, and try it yourself for the best understanding.

Tip! You can resize and undock the Animation Pane. Making it larger can help with long or complex animations.

Selection PaneThe one thing you can’t do from the Animation

Pane is rename the objects you’re animating; luckily you can do that with the

Selection Pane. Find it with the Arrange options:

TransitionsTransitions are animations that occur when you move between slides. Again, I would use these sparingly. The Transition ribbon also has the option to automatically advance a slide after a specified number of seconds. This is useful in creating animations that span multiple slides, or creating a slide deck that doesn’t need a presenter (like the slides that run before Staff Meeting).

The Push transition can create the illusion of a camera panning over a larger space. See the Real World Examples in the class directory for a demo. Remember that the transition you select will work as the entrance effect for that slide.

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Action ButtonsAction buttons provide a level of interactivity for the audience. These work best for presentations that will be viewed by someone on their own computer (like a self-study you would work through in your office). Action buttons can also be used by presenters for better control over their presentation, one classic example is the use of hyperlinks in slides to launch a web browser to a specified page.

To add an action, first select the object then go to the Insert ribbon and select Action. This only works on single objects, not a group. Most people know they can make text into a hyperlink, but you can also link from images or autoshapes. A dialog box will open with

options for the type of action you can add.

NavigationUse the navigation options to move to the previous, next, first, last, or any specific slide in the presentation. Using these buttons you could create a branching presentation where the viewer could take one path to its end and then return to the beginning to pick a new path.

Play SoundSounds can play automatically or on-click of an object. You can also make them part of an animation sequence.

Open File / ProgramThis is basically creating a hyperlink or shortcut to the specified file/program. So you can click a button to open a PDF or anything else you want.

OLEs and MacrosYou have to insert the OLE object or macro first before you can create an action involving it. This is beyond the scope of the class, but I wanted to mention it so you know it’s an option.

Animation TriggersAnimations can be triggered by clicking a specific object. On the Animations ribbon, set up the animation you want and with the

animation object selected click Trigger > then from the list select the object you want to click to start the animation. In the Animation Pane, anything listed above the Trigger acts normally, but everything below it waits for the trigger before it plays.

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Additional ResourcesRemember to look through the other materials found in this folder: the PowerPoint from the class, the demo, and the real world examples.

Slide Design TheorySlide:ology by Nancy Duarte – Amazon link

Duarte Design’s Five Rules for Presentations – YouTube link (5 min)

Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds – Amazon link

Garr Reynolds @Google – YouTube link (1 hr presentation summarizes Presentation Zen)

External ExamplesTed Talks – http://www.ted.com (Most presenters have excellent visual aids.)

Hans Rosling – Ted link (A favorite of mine; shows dense stats in an exciting way)

My bookmarks - http://delicious.com/tmjbeary (updated with lots of design tips)

Find free images Open ClipArt – Public domain images, can download in any size.

Flickr (Creative Commons) – Huge variety of photos, some better than others.

Stock.xchng – Requires free registration, but professional quality images are worth it.

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