I spent last week in Las Vegas working on, and running, the presentations for a large corporate event. Walking into a ballroom, before anyone is there, for a group this size is always “big.” Just a few quick photos of the main ballroom seating.
Note the ‘flying’ screens. With a room this large a second set of screens hang suspended above the audience so people in the back can read the slides.
– Troy @ TLC
I pulled the images from a recent presentation to show a nifty side-by-side comparison of the same slide with and without some cast shadow elements. This first slide shows all of the photos inserted – because I have dropped out the background around each image and saved as a .png the slide looks nice and clean.
Here is the same image with an oval cast shadow under each element. The cast shadow helps add depth to the slide and make the images pop from the background.
In addition the slide had a dramatic animated entrance, which was accented even more by animating on the cast shadows.
Click here to view movie.
– Troy @ TLC
PowerPoint has very, very basic image editing capabilities. But some great effects and adjusts can be created quickly using the Brightness and Contrast toolset. Here is my original image of a chess board added to the slide.
But it is to dark and too much contrast to effectively overlay text on.
Here is my adjusted image:
Instead of opening the image in Photoshop again – adjusting the brightness and contrast – saving out – re-inserting into presentation, I did all of the needed adjustments directly in PowerPoint.
I selected the image, increased the brightness around 8 clicks and decreased the contrast around 10 clicks and now the image is ready for the text box to be added to the slide. Took less than 10 seconds!
– Troy @ TLC
Here is a photo of the stage for the event I developed the presentations for a few weeks ago.
The left and right screens supplied most of the speaker support slides (separate presentations from two computers running in sync). In addition additional screens would fly in from the slotted openings seen in the top-center of the staging (16×9 rectangle, floor to ceiling LED wall, and an oval (which you can see in the photo below)).
– Troy @ TLC
PowerPoint by virtue of providing a Content Master and a Title Master has conditioned the world that presentations only need two looks. When I design a template it generally includes 3 to 4 master slides that go beyond the standard two slide system. Here is a recent example:
(1) Theme Graphic
This slide is used for pre/post-meeting (walk-in/walk-out) or during extended Q&A. Usually with a strong branding image.
(2) Title Slide
Used for introducing major topics, speakers, etc.
(3) Content Slide
Used for all of the content…
– Troy @ TLC
I have not shared a lot of “work” photos lately and a few emails have asked, so here is my “desk” from this past week. Yes all of the computers and monitors in the foreground are mine (actually one computer is not there).
– Troy @ TLC
From the middle of August through the middle of the upcoming November we have been in continuous motion. Lots of great projects, super clients and variety. Here are a few photos of a recent “Advanced PowerPoint Training Day.” Lori and I met with a core team of presentation developers at their corporate office for an entire day of indepth how-to’s and design ideas geared to expanding their corporate presentations.
– Troy @ TLC
A recent project involved taking a good presentation and making it great. I had some very clean and easy to read PowerPoint tables. They conveyed the information and made good use of the tools in the application. Here is the original:
But the goal was to add visual dynamics to the presentation and this means making all elements coordinate with a common color scheme, font use and positioning. Here is the same table with some additional formatting:
– Troy @ TLC
MS Visio is a great tool for putting complex processes into a visual layout. But, like most business applications, it does not have a lot of visual aesthetics. Here is a slide from a recent project:
The best thing about this slide (to me), is the client was able to quickly create something that showed me exactly what they wanted.
My job was to inject some visual dynamics to the presentation. So a few hours of working in PhotoShop and PowerPoint the same information now looks like this:
Same information – just a slightly enhanced presentation of it!
– Troy @ TLC
Here is a sample from a recent project (logos, names and telling content have been removed to protect the design challenged). Here is the original slide:
Here is the revised slide:
I was somewhat limited in what could be done. Things like the template could not be altered, content could not be edited, etc. But here are some details of what was adjusted:
(1) I adjusted the template so the content text box was separated a bit more from the header text.
(2) I changed the font to a more legible Arial, which does not have the serifs (small ‘hooks’ on the end of the letters)
(3) I adjusted the overall line spacing from 0 to .35, this gives a bit of room between each bullet and allows the brain to “clump” the content into sections – which makes it more legible.
(4) Used a soft return (SHIFT RETURN) and made sub-content on its own line and reduced its font size. Did the same with the sub-content at the end of the last bullet.
There is a lot of small things that can be done to text heavy slides to make them more legible. The problem is that this usually involves modifying the content on a slide-by-slide basis, which can be time consuming. But the results are an audience the is able to understand your message clearer!
Troy @ TLC