How to PowerPoint

Most PowerPoint slides are filled with text and decorative images.  We our text on the screen and notice it looks a little bland.  So we decide to put a nice image on the screen as well.

That’s fine for beginners.  But if you want to do a better job communicating, you have to apply more focus on the slide’s visual design.  And it all starts with understanding some graphic design basics.

If you’ve never had any training in visual design, I highly recommend that you get this book, The Non-Designer’s Design Book.  It does a great job covering the basics of visual design and typography.  I like the book because it gives good before and after examples.

I’ve also written a few blog posts for the Rapid E-Learning Blog that deal with visual design.

• 3 Graphic Design Principles for Instructional Design Success: Basic ideas around visual communication.
• 3 Simple Techniques to Guide Your Learner’s Attention: Explore ways to guide where and when the learner looks at info on the screen.
• 5 Common Visual Design Mistakes: Things to avoid when build out the slides.

Check out the blog posts and get the design book.  You’ll be creating slides like a pro in no time.

I worked for a multibillion company that employed about 30,000 people.  There was one executive who made the decision that anything built in PowerPoint could only use a single PowerPoint template.

That’s ridiculous!

Now, I understand the need to have some quality control over how PowerPoint is used; especially when you interact with the public.  But, that’s why you come up with style guides and teach your staff about basic design concepts.

The executive saw PowerPoint from a single perspective.  He was a director who was presenting to higher level executives and the investment community.  From his perspective, it was best to have tight quality control over how the company was portrayed in public.  That makes sense.

However, the reality is that PowerPoint is a versatile tool used for more than just public presentations.  Because of this, it’s ridiculous to apply broad branding rules and template limitations to all uses of PowerPoint.

Not All PowerPoint Files Are the Same

For example, I wrote a blog post about PowerPoint and rapid elearning.  When you use PowerPoint to build courses, you need as much room as possible.  Any branding should be applied to the color theme or player.  You should try to keep the slide are as open as possible and use that for the learning content.

The problem template restrictions is that the message of the presentation is discounted and altered to comply with the template requirements.

The template should just be a guide for the content and what you hope to communicate.  But it shouldn’t dictate the content.  Sometimes a branded template is fine, but sometimes it’s just crap.  And it’s usually the cause for a lot of the horrible PowerPoint presentations we have to endure.

OK, enough of my rant.

Here are some good resources to help you rethink how you use PowerPoint and whether or not having strict branding requirements is necessary.

These are some key books that I think do a great job discussing visual design principles; and then blends them with sound presentation and communication concepts.  They’ll make you rethink the one-size-fits all template strategy.

Non-Designer’s Design Book If there is only one book to buy, it’s this one.  You’ll learn all of the basics about typography and visual design.	Beyond Bullet Points If you want to do presentations and PowerPoint right, then this book is highly recommended.  It’s practical and has some good job aids.
Slide:ology Great book on visual design concepts and how to craft better presentations.  They have some good examples of branded templates that do work.	Presentation Zen This book is very similar to slide:ology and will help you learn to communicate better with your slides.  His new book goes through the new design.

Be sure to check out this free ebook by Seth Godin on Really Bad PowerPoint.   It’s not just a rant, he’s got some very good tips on communication that will help you do a better job.

If you read good presentation books like Slide:ology and Presentation Zen, they’ll typically refer you to use photos for your slides rather than clip art.  Generally this isn’t a bad idea.  But there’s no reason to be dogmatic.

The reason that these books recommend not using clip art is because a lot of the clip art is dated, and many presentations mix and match the clip art used.  So you end up with amateurish slides that are neither consistent nor visually interesting. 

That doesn’t have to be the case. 

First, the Microsoft Office Online site is updated daily with all sorts of new clip art (and pictures).  They look really good and will definitely enhance your slides.  Second, much of the clip art follows a similar style.  By using the same style, you can get away from the amateurish look and create really nice presentations that look great and are consistent.

So the trick is to locate the clip art that follows the same style.  That’s what we’ll cover in this quick tutorial.  Basically, you’ll:

• search for the clip art you like
• click on the properties
• locate the style to see similar images

Clip Art Styles Tutorial

Click here to view the tutorial.

I have noticed that a lot of the newer clip art doesn’t have a style listed in the properties.  You can see an example of this at the beginning of the tutorial.  In those cases, you can fine tune the search via the keywords until you see all of the similar images together.