Mario Kart Template
Game Background (because we had fun researching this blog post series!):
- The Super Mario Kart racing video game was developed and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Super Mario Kart was the first game in the ever-evolving Mario Kart series. It was released in Japan and North America, August 27 1992, and in then in Europe the following year in 1993. The Mario character was added four months into the game development. In the original prototype he was dressed a plain overalls – with no moustache.
The PowerPoint Template:
- Amber on the TLC Creative design team claimed Mario and developed this super fun Mario Kart Deluxe 8 themed full feature PowerPoint template, which features 3 background image versions; Race Course, Tokyo Blur, and Rainbow Road!
Here is the animated theme graphic layout:
Download the Mario Kart template for FREE! MarioKart Themed 16×9 Template
TLC Creative Headed to the Classic Arcade for a New PowerPoint Template Series!
Design team fun on display! As an internal project, designers on the TLC Creative team picked an arcade game or system from a great online top 20 list I found. Read through the upcoming posts to see PowerPoint template creativity – and download each free template!
Podcast episode release!
Troy and Nolan talk PowerPoint Mac vs Windows PowerPoint this episode. It is the same application, but is everything the same between the platforms? Find out during this conversation. Listen here.
Slidewise’s Font Management is My Favorite Feature!
Neuxpower’s Slidewise PowerPoint add-in has many fantastic tools. When initially testing it, the font audit and management functionality instantly won me over and quickly was installed on all computers at TLC Creative Services!
Working with my same demo deck, which has now been consolidated to 2 Master Slides, the Slidewise Font Audit shows there are 5 fonts used in presentation.
Doing a review of the content master slide shows Arial is the font that should be used throughout the presentation (note: this master slide’s placeholder text boxes have customized text by the TLC Creative design team, not all files have this easy of reference).
With this information, I can use Slidewise to quickly consolidate the fonts in the presentation. To update all instances of Calibri to Arial, click the 3-dot menu and REPLACE FONTS.
From the REPLACE FONTS dialog, choose the REPLACE WITH font (Arial in this deck) and REPLACE FONTS button. Note: the presentation will close, process and then reopen to the same slide. This is a bit unsettling (to have your work file close), but know it is part of the process 😊
For Century Gothic, I wanted to see where it is used to determine if it should remain or go. Click any slide in the Slidewise list and PowerPoint jumps to that slide and the text box of that font selected (which is amazing!). Clicking through the Century Gothic instances, all are slide content that should use the theme font, Arial. An easy and quick update using the Replace Fonts dialog.
Investigating the Tw Cen MT font, it is the Master Handout text boxes. First, this is a detail level that would virtually never be identified without the Slidewise Font Audit. These fonts can also be updated to the theme font, Arial.
In a short time I was able to see every font used in the presentation, where fonts were used, and if needed update to the desired font. The end result on this deck is consolidating all to a single font – Arial.
Get more info about Slidewise here.
Troy @ TLC
Slidewise’s Slide Master Function
Slidewise has updated the Master Layout feature, and it can save soooo much time cleaning up a presentation (all that behind the scenes formatting clients do not see, or generally appreciate).
Here is the audit of my sample slide deck – 5 master slides in the presentation.
But the distributed template had 2 master slides, which is what I want to update the client version too.
I am going to focus on the “1_Custom Design” master slide for this example. There are 5 slides using this Master, and there is also 1 unused Master Layout.
The typical workflow (for me) would be to view the slide masters, mouse over each layout to see what slides use that master layout, close the master view, find each noted slide, and change the layout to the correct Master Slide version of the layout. Lots of manual work that can take a lot of time!
With Slidewise I can shorten the workflow to a single process. All 5 slides using the “Custom Design” master are Title and Content layouts. Click the 3-dot menu and REASSIGN SLIDES.
The Reassign Slides dialog is where all the magic happens! The slides to reassign are automatically populated. Then select which SLIDE MASTER to use, and what LAYOUT to use. Click REASSIGN SLIDES and done!
The Custom Design layout is still in the deck because it is Preserved (eg. even if there are no active slides, the Master Slide remains in the list of Master Slides available). Slidewise makes it easy to delete the unused master slide, and remove the Master Slide from the deck.
Repeat for the other Master Slides to remove; use the Slidewise Masters pane to reassign all layouts, delete master if preserved and in a fraction of the time needed for manual identify and change process, the deck has the desired 2 master slides!
Get more info about Slidewise here.
Troy @ TLC
SlideWise’s New Transition Audit!
Slidewise, v1.8, has a new amazing feature – a slide transition audit! The dev team at Neuxpower was super responsive when I suggested a slide transition audit. And the final release is better than my simple description and request! Here is a quick look at the feature:
Open a presentation (that is a local file, no support for Teams/network files – yet). If running version 1.8 or higher, a new icon is available in the nav bar.
The Transitions tab shows an audit of the presentation showing what transition is set for each slide, the duration of the transition, and if an auto advance has been set. On this example presentation I can within moments identify:
- a slide with no transition
- a slide with a different/longer transition duration
- a slide using a different transition than the others (TIP: I always inspect Morph transition slides to assure the content is set for Morph – eg. there is content on the previous slide connected to content on the Morph transition slide. If not, the Morph transition is just a long fade transition).
The default view is displaying in slide order. But the information can be filtered to sort by transition type (eg. see all of the FADESMOOTHLY transitions grouped, the MORPH transitions grouped, etc.), duration or auto transition.
But wait there is more!! This is not just a super helpful, consolidated list of all slide transitions. Click any specific slide (highlighted in green in below image), that slide is selected and updates to that slide can be made on the Transitions tab.
The Slidewise add-in website is here.
Troy @ TLC
Troy in Barcelona
Presentations happen throughout the world. Luckily I have the opportunity to travel much of the globe assuring presentations happen, such as this meeting in Barcelona, Spain (bottom photo taken on one of my free evening away from the ballroom of the always inspiring Sagrada FamÃlia)
