Episode #76, The Consequences of Good Presentation Design is up! Join Troy and Sandy as we delve into the actual benefits and results of good design for clients, stakeholders, audiences and even fellow designers.Take a listen!Subscribe on iTunes and check out the show notes for more info.
The Interaction Design Foundation has a fantastic (and brief) primer on how to use hierarchy in design.
Take a look!
PowerPoint’s Format Painter can save you endless hours with shapes and text boxes, but it doesn’t work on charts. There is, however, a method to save and paste design formatting from one chart to another. So, let’s dive into the mysterious world of Chart Templates and .crtx files.
We’ll start with data sets for the highest paid athletes in 2018 and 2017 and a default chart style (click the images below for a closer look)...
Continue reading the entire article over at CreativePro.com.
And don't forget, I'll be speaking at CreativePro's CreativeProWeek Click Presentation Conference in June in Seattle! (Discounted registration available until April 15!)
Stephanie Evergreen will soon be out with another book for the data visualization community (to coincide with the second edition of her phenomenal first book Effective Data Visualization). This one is called The Data Visualization Sketchbook, and in it Stephanie gives readers multiple templates for use in assembling data reports, handouts, dashboards, presentations and more.The templates and overall approach are a nice reminder that diving into Tableau or Word or PowerPoint is not always the best or most efficient course of action. Sometimes getting pencil and paper out helps organize your data and information and simplify your message.Below are a couple of Stephanie's templates I used to prep for an upcoming data report project.
Take a look and also take a look at Stephanie's site for tons of great info on visualizing data.
Episode #75, Live from the The 2019 Microsoft MVP Summit is up!This week we gather around a table at the Microsoft MVP Summit and have a casual conversation about all sorts of stuff with our fellow MVPs.Take a listen!Subscribe on iTunes and check out the show notes for more info.
The addition of 3D object support for PowerPoint last year was a huge leap forward by Microsoft. Naturally, first generation features always come with limitations, confusions and questions by users. That was definitely the case with 3D, but Microsoft has continued to improve the feature (animations!) and is committed to its future.Since 3D is such a dense and multi-faceted thing, Microsoft just released content guidelines for users and creators of 3D objects. A lot of what's in this new documentation can get pretty technical ("Joint Count Mapped to Vertices Maximum on an i5 vs i7..."), but it's going be vital to a certain crowd trying to figure out why the 3D model of their new engine isn't rendering correctly when the CEO is introducing it on stage.You can read it all here and download a PDF or, of course, a PowerPoint version of the document.
CreativeProWeek is the country's premiere "how-to" conference for design professionals. Their unique format divides the week into various subject areas including InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator and more. And last year for the first time, the conference added two days focused on presentation design – that all-too-important topic that doesn't always get much love from the more traditional worlds of print and graphic design.
This year, CreativeProWeek is again offering two days of intensive focus on presentation design in their conference within a conference called Click. And I will be speaking in Seattle the week of June 10th along with some other industry pros including Julie Terberg and Richard Goring.
I will be giving sessions on Alternatives to Bullet Points and Visualizing Data for Presentation.If you are professional presentation designer or if you're a graphic designer who often gets frustrated when called upon to design presentations, this is the conference for you. Come for just the Clickportion or come for more. Personally, I'll be there all week eagerly soaking up the InDesign and Photoshop sessions. There's always more to learn!
And if you are thinking of going, definitely register by April 15th when the early bird discount expires.
Take a look at the full conference agenda, list of expert speakers, and register now at CreativeProWeek.com.
Please don't hesitate to reach out with any questions on this (or anything else, of course) if you have them!
Episode #73, Presenting in a Non-Profit World (with Andy Goodman) is up! This week we ditch the corporate world to talk about presentation in the world of cause-based organizations. Andy Goodman of The Goodman Center joins us to talk about his career teaching storytelling and presentation to non-profits, NGO's and foundations. And we dive into his seminal 2006 book, Why Bad Presentations Happen to Good Causes which you can download for free here.
Take a listen!Subscribe on iTunes and check out the show notes for more info.
Episode #72, No Formal Design Education brings Bryan Jones and Stephy Lewis to the podcast a long with Lori Chollar to talk about non-traditional paths to the world of presentation design.
Take a listen!Subscribe on iTunes and check out the show notes for more info.
Episode #71, Revisions and File Versioning – How Many? is up and live!Troy, Sandy and I talk about how to set client expectations for and handle revisions.
Take a listen!Subscribe on iTunes and check out the show notes for more info.
If you're in the business of setting up PowerPoint templates and need a way to create a layout in which a logo or other content always floats on top of an image placeholder, these are two hacks that will do just that for you.
And one will also let you create an image placeholder in any shape you want—not just default circles and rectangles.
One of my favorite PowerPoint hacks is to hide page numbers in slideshow mode because really, who needs to see those on screen? This simple technique can also be used to hide unreadable source notes and any other content that should be visible in printouts and PDFs, but just isn't needed or wanted on screen. Watch it here:
There's a new(ish) conference dedicated to presentation out there, and I couldn't be more excited to be a speaker at this year's Click Presentation Design Conference, June 13-14 in Seattle.
Click is a part of Creative Pro Week, a larger gathering dedicated to Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator and other aspects of print design, run by CreativePro. Traditionally, those hard core Adobe print and digital graphic designers didn't pay a whole lot of attention to the world of presentation, so I was thrilled to see the organizers of Creative Pro Week add a couple of days dedicated to presentation design at last year's conference in New Orleans. And apparently, it was a hit, so they are again offering attendees sessions dedicated to the world of slides.I'll be giving two sessions (topics to be announced soon) and will be joining a number of other heavyweights including Julie Terberg and Richard Goring of BrightCarbon.
The complete list of speakers and more information is here, and the full conference agenda will be announced shortly. But you can register now for 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5-day passes depending on how much learnin' you want. I'm hoping to arrive a day or two prior to the start of Click in order to deepen my InDesign skills.
If you've been on the fence about attending the Presentation Summit because it might be too much presentation and not enough design, Creative Pro Week might be for you! Or if you just want to soak up as much presentation stuff as you can, I would definitely consider heading out to Seattle in June.
And if you do decide to go, let me know as I would love to meet you!
Episode #70, Presentations in the Courtroom with Kerri L. Ruttenberg is up and live!
Troy, Sandy and I welcome our first legal guest, Kerri L. Ruttenberg, to talk about trial graphics, how presentation is used in the courtroom and her fantastic book, Images with Impact: Design and Use of Winning Trial Visuals.
Kerri is a top DC litigation attorney and probably the top expert in using visuals in the courtroom in the country. I reviewed her book a while back when I first learned of it, but now we get to dive a bit deeper and hear more about the psychology of visuals, what can and can't be used in a courtroom and what the state of the trial graphics industry is.
Even if you never plan on working in this area of presentation design, this is a really good conversation in which you'll learn a ton not just about how to convince juries with visuals, but how to convince your own audiences.
Take a listen!Subscribe on iTunes and check out the show notes for more info.
Episode #67, There Are No Mistakes (with Travis Thomas) is up and live!Troy, Sandy and I welcome Travis Thomas from LiveYesAnd for a discussion on how to live with presentation mistakes and what can be learned from the world of improv comedy.
Take a listen!Subscribe on iTunes and check out the show notes for more info.
The New York Times has been using the below graphic style for a lot of their recent political coverage. They didn't invent this look, of course, but I really like it and wanted to show how you can recreate this effect all within PowerPoint in a just a few steps.
Episode #64, International Perspectives on PowerPoint is up and live!We took advantage of the recent Presentation Summit to gather a group of presentationists from across the globe. Take a listen!
Subscribe on iTunes and check out the show notes for more info.
My friend Lori Chollar of TLC Creative gave a talk on typography for presentations at the recent Presentation Summit, but my favorite part is her History of Typography (in 60 Seconds).
Take a look—I know you have the time...
Episode #63, Live From the 2018 Presentation Summit is up and live!We gathered a bunch awesome people and turned the mic on at last week's Presentation Summit in San Diego...
Subscribe on iTunes and check out the show notes for more info.
Episode #58, Women Owned Presentation Businesses is up and live!Troy and I get kicked out of the room this week while Sandra welcomes guest hosts Lori Chollar and industry legend Nancy Duarte to discuss presentation businesses that are owned by women.
Subscribe on iTunes and check out the show notes for more info.
