|
|
Working in the Portland, Oregon area, the PowerPoint Queen is typically involved in a project of one type or another with Intel – usually a few times a year. Intel typically uses PowerPoint often as their main go-to program for communications (as most of Corporate America does – thank goodness!), but one of the design elements that they like to use often is icons and photography blended together and they do that well.
If you review these sample below from a recent slide deck, we married the icons and photography to create groupings of icons that help tell the story of a community connecting the Intel Business Values. Each of these icons were then pulled out per slide to highlight more details per segment. This usage of an imagery and icon blend is highly successful and earned high amounts of positive feedback!
These types of design development requires designers, art directors, design teams and should be highly skilled in their design applications, customized. In other words, stay away from clip art!
Now, as I have said before, all work and no play, so today is Halloween and I wanted to share some creative rewards with you — if you have a moment to spare.
Everyday, I’m Shufflin’…… When my oldest son requested to be the Shuffle Bot from the LMFAO video and song “Party Rock Anthem” I thought – wow, that is neat, where can be buy that? Then I looked around online and found no such costume. What?! How are we going to make this happen?? I suggested other costumes and I got the ‘ole rolling of the eyes and stomping of the foot. Ah, ok — guess I am on the hook for this one now.
Just some history here – I have never, ever, ever made a homemade costume, so this would be my first attempt. But I am a designer and remember doing 3D work at Parsons School of Design in NYC, so I KNOW I can accomplish something of the sort. So, I printed out photos, did some thinking on it and came up with this idea: Get a box, tape it or spray paint it gold, cut out the mouth, eyes and we could be pretty close. But how to keep it on his head?
I decided that a hat planted and taped inside the box (with pillow foam and padding around it) and duct-tape in really, really well (where would we be without duct tape??) would do the trick. And it did!! WOW. Some great gold duct tape (again with the duct tape!), some creativity and lots of time one evening and look what I created. Must say I am pretty proud. And my son? He is thrilled!
Yes, I know this isn’t PowerPoint related, but as the saying goes, all work and no play…
The iPhone has provided me with an interest in this little new phenomenon called the QR Code (Quick Response code) and it got me curious on how easy it is to make one. So I did. So easy. Go here – http://qrcode.kaywa.com/ – you’re welcome. Now put it everywhere. Below is the PowerPoint Queen’s portfolio web site link. Go ahead, point your phone at it and see if it takes you someplace new. And let’s see how long it is before these are everywhere and are highly annoying. OK, OK, back to work……
Have you ever created a PowerPoint and then tried to email it, only to discover that the file is way too large to be sent? Or you receive some cute kitten PowerPoints from a friend and the files eat up all of the space on your hard drive due to their enormous size?! Highly annoying.
Recently was asked many questions about how to keep the file size down in PowerPoint. The most ideal way is to keep any artwork that is placed within to be at 72 DPI, RGB. And, the size on the image should be about the physical size (or a small bit larger) than the size you plan to place it within the slide. 150 DPI resolution is ok for logos or text that needs to be super-crisp (and may be part of a graphic), but that should be the exception.
Please do not place PDFs within slides. They can sometimes contain CMYK imagery with it, causing some issues and you may end up seeing the dreaded red x, or worse, a black box. PDFs can also inflate the PowerPoint size as well.
You can also compress the files internally from within PowerPoint, but this will have an over-all effect, all at once, condensing and making all of your images compressed, which may not be the visual outcome you are looking for.
Bottom line is that your images should be thoughtfully placed within, and that size does matter!
I know, I know… it’s been since FOREVER since there has been a new blog post from the PowerPoint Queen of Portland. It is a busy time of year – does that excuse work for you? Nonetheless, promising to write about Master Pages, I am working on that for a New Year post. Stay tuned…
In the meantime, check out this awesome video called “The Marshmallow Problem.” In particular, check out the PowerPoint presentation that this presenter shows during his conversation. It’s very interesting to view. Clear, clean text. Large bold fonts. Simple animations. Nothing over the top, but designed well. Photos that bring you into the experiment. To-the-point and very engaging. Here is how his company describes this presentation – check it out!
The Marshmallow Problem
Tom Wujec presents his research into the “marshmallow problem” — a simple team-building exercise that involves dry spaghetti, one yard of tape and a marshmallow. Who can build the tallest tower with these ingredients? And why does a surprising group always beat the average?
PowerPoint 2007 is dreamy. Yes, I said dreamy. You would think it is dreamy too if you had been using 2003 for so many years, and then was able to utilize 2007 more often. 2007 is so much more user-friendly and easy-to-use than the quirky-unstable 2003. You would be surprised, though, how many companies and corporations are still using 2003! Time for an upgrade – the Queen promises it to be a pleasant upgrade! As long as you work within the Master pages (and you DO know what those are, don’t you? No? Ut oh, hmmm, my next blog post will be about Master Pages), your template-creating can be easy-peasy!
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
NWEA — Portland, Oregon. Recently, I had the pleasure of working on a template for NWEA. They wanted to have one Master Template that carried each color section so that they could break presentations out into categories per deck. Working in 2007, or higher, one is able to do that seamlessly. See some samples below.
This image is a screen capture of the overall template. You can see that there are three main colors: Blue, Orange and Green. Each page layout comes in the three different colors, allowing for a multitude of options when creating a presentation.
In these example template slides, you can also see how you can not only have color differences, but image differences as well. This allows for even more variety and depending on how many slides you have plugged into the Master template pages, your end-user can have so many to choose from, that the template will lend itself to many months of use without getting dry or boring. And no one has to try and find an image and throws down one that is sized wrong, is out-of-scope with the branding, or is the wrong resolution.
  
These slides show some more variety within this NWEA template. These are the more common, bulleted slides. Check out NWEA. They do wonderful things for kids and their education!
Taking a break from PowerPoints to talk about speculative work.
When times are tough, and jobs can be few and far between, one of the design industry trends is to try and hold “contests” or request designers to work for free, in the hopes that, if the customer likes their design, it will get chosen and then designer will get paid. This is called SPEC-work. You can find these situations here in Portland, and nationally as well.
But wait! Are the designers creating the SPEC work any good? Sometimes, sure. Sometimes, not so much. Either way, there are industry standards out there for the design-world that clients should respect. After all, when was the last time you asked your plumber to work for free, and if you liked the work they did, THEN you would pay them??
Here is one web site that explains it all: NO-SPEC.com
Here is the AIGA’s position on spec work and the risks involved. (excerpt below, via AIGA.com)
Uncompensated design is not the same as spec work
Speculative work—work done without compensation in the hope of being compensated, for the client’s speculation—takes a number of forms in communication design. There are five general situations in which some designers may work, by choice, without compensation:
- Speculative or “spec” work: work done for free, in hopes of getting paid for it
- Competitions: work done in the hopes of winning a prize—in whatever form that might take
- Volunteer work: work done as a favor or for the experience, without the expectation of being paid
- Internships: a form of volunteer work that involves educational gain
- Pro bono work: volunteer work done “for the public good”
Spec work presents risks to both the client and the designer
Clients and designers knowingly engaged in spec work share an equal responsibility to understand the potential risks and rewards:
- Clients risk compromised quality as little time, energy and thought can go into speculative work, which precludes the most important element of most design projects—the research, thoughtful consideration of alternatives, and development and testing of prototype designs.
- Designers risk being taken advantage of as some clients may see this as a way to get free work; it also diminishes the true economic value of the contribution designers make toward client’s objectives.
- There are legal risks for both parties should aspects of intellectual property, trademark and trade-dress infringements become a factor.
Occasionally, I come across a book or two that offers up some great PowerPoint content. Most recently, I started to read:
There were some information nuggets that were helpful to a fellow graphic designer who is seeking to create powerful PowerPoints for clients. As seen on the jacket of this book, there are many quotes from industry-folk that appreciate it as well. To quote:
“To change the world, you need to pitch. To pitch, you need to design. To design, you need this book.”
—Guy Kawasaki, Co-founder, Alltop.com, and former chief evangelist of Apple
This book is supposed to be for the non-professionally trained designer, but even if you are one, it may illuminate and highlight some concepts that you already knew, but they were buried deep down by corporate democracy and needed to be lifted out from within. Okay, maybe I am getting a little deep, but when you have the word ZEN in your book title, it tends to do that to you.
The chapters are broken-up into digestible categories, making it easy to select what you want to read first and foremost. The summary sections I found most important. An overview of each chapter, a way for me to skim the material. This helped so that I could read this, and still accomplish the other 300 things on my to-do list, without feeling bogged down by a large book. And the visuals, the photos, they were very… Zen. If you would like to pick one main PowerPoint how-to book, to push the “designer” in you, this is a must for your bookshelf. Or your Kindle.
Wow. That about says it all, doesn’t it? “Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.” Quoted in a New York Times article, by Brig. General H. R. McMaster, (who, according to the article, “banned PowerPoint presentations when he led the successful effort to secure the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar in 2005…. by likening PowerPoint to an internal threat”). And yes, there are so many times that PowerPoint slides ARE in the wrong hands and it is like an INTERNAL THREAT – to your marketing department, your clients, your customers!
Then there is the slide they, um, hmm, (I cannot say designed), mapped out… Check it out.
Richard Engel, NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent, goes on to say, “They say this slide is what happens when smart people are asked to come up with a solution to the wrong question.” Well, the PowerPoint Queen, as well as any other designer out there looking, may say that they can see a myriad of ways that this can be improved and it isn’t the fault of the PowerPoint program, although I do agree that the on-going, ever-so-boring, bulleted list PPTs have a thing or two to learn about HOW you are educating and getting your MESSAGE across.
Even the government has figured that out! How on earth did that happen!!??
This question is asked a lot – Where do I start? “I have this template and I’ve dropped in some text but I am not sure how to make this more lively. The template isn’t working well and how do I add charts that look good? Oh, and I have these 20 other slides that I want to merge in from 2 other presentations that are in a different template. HELP – where do I start? Can you offer some advice?”
Hmmm, advice? Sure. Do the job for you over the phone? Sorry, can’t do that. The Queen can certainly provide some basic guidelines. Not every job has a budget for the Queen to become involved and get her hands on it to make it sparkle. But there are options:
You can have the Queen clean the template up and merge the pages so that they are applied to the new template and then you can do the rest. You can have the Queen simply work on the charts or icons. You can hire the Queen to train you so you can take it from there.
Here are a few samples pages from a recently PowerPoint presentation created for a nationally well-known printer, requiring redesign of their template, as well as clean-up and the merging of many decks into one.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
MERISEL, INC — Since printing is their business, their PowerPoints are typically printed, but they wanted to have the ability to take them for sales calls, edit them on-the-spot or email them as needed. The images have to look crisp and clear and the presentation fresh and colorful. Their older decks were looking dated and it was time for an update!
Would you like to know what the Queen would do, the steps taken, to get the above completed? Here are a few (pssst, save this someplace):
1) Open your slide deck. (Hey, you have to start someplace… right?)
2) Make sure your over-all look and feel is set-up in the Master pages. Ideal is a simple Title and Bulleted slide. That is the location to drop your logo, and set the text boxes in the locations and sizes you want them so that they show up like that across the board for all of your slides.
3) Get out of the Master template pages and into your deck and start applying the Slide Layouts to the appropriate slides.
4) You can, of course, touch-up each page as needed (add a chart, an image draw and arrow to point at something), but you should always start from the Master pages. Creating slides page-by-page is not only time-consuming, it’s not smart. What if you are asked to now change the font, or a color of the headline? If you set that up in the Master pages, you change one item, and wholla – they all change. If you hand-changed them page-by-page… good luck…
5) PowerPoint is frustrating in the sense that it will “Apply” the layout and then you may need to “Reapply” the layout again. Maybe even a couple of times. Just check from slide to slide to make sure you’re pages are looking consistent.
6) If you have to now bring in a bunch of slides from another presentation, you’re about set-up and ready to do that without too many hiccups. (DISCLAIMER: There are always hiccups when using PowerPoint – just deal with it).
7) In the Slide Sorter view, select the slides to copy and paste over into your new deck. You most likely will have to “Reapply” the layout to the slides as needed, and colors may change, graphs may shift… again, this is all part of the game.
 Add photos and charts with the Insert menu, or double-click on the set-up pages within the deck (if you set that Layout design to your page).
9) Add animation per click or automatically and then you’re done!
Just a few basics. There are so many more. But you see, you could do it. What’s that? You still want it prettier or jazzed-up design added? Better resolution photos? Animation to be slick? Okay… send it on over.
|
|
