The Presentation Guild represents us, the presentation industry representation. The Guild’s monthly email newsletter with its list of activities and opportunities for presentation designers inspired this episode. We are joined by 4 of the current Guild board members to talk about the Presentation Guild, its events, how they are announced, who can attend, what is planned, and more! Listen HERE.
Troy @ TLC
Have you ever gone to open a PowerPoint file, selected a presentation from the RECENT list, and got the “File-not-found” error message?
I have found that PowerPoint, and all Office Apps, are not really good at keeping track of files listed in the Recent list. Once a file is added to the Recent list, the listing stays there – even if the file is moved to a different location, renamed or deleted – for all time, and the original location and name are what’s referenced. Essentially, PowerPoint can take the file name, but it doesn’t guarantee it will be available when you click on it.
There is an option to manage what is displayed in the Recent menu, but it’s not easily discoverable. Right-click on the line with the file that should not be displayed in the Recent list. Then select REMOVE FROM LIST. The file is not being deleted. Only it being displayed on the Recent list will be removed.
Troy @ TLC
Continuing on from the previous post, “Circles and Text (that does not fit)“, with some best practice reasons for NOT stacking a text box on top of a shape.
The important message is, creating PowerPoint slides is a balancing act of what is fast and looks okay vs. using best practices to create slides that are future-proofed for easy formatting and use.
Troy @ TLC
The last post highlighted the new default font, Aptos. There is also a new default color scheme!
The revision is subtle as you can see with the side-by-side comparison. The Standard Colors remain unchanged (unchanged since 1998 I believe!). I learned much of the color decisions the Microsoft team takes into consideration are for accessibility needs – and there is a lot of documentation and reason for each color selected. The formula for the color tints remains unchanged, and not accessible to users.
Here is a larger view of the color chips
In researching the previous color schemes for a comparison, I located color schemes for Office 2007-2010, then Office 2013-2022 and the new theme that is just labelled “Office Theme”. There is not a missing color scheme. The naming is based on the version number of PowerPoint, and we had no new version of PowerPoint between 2010 and 2013!
Troy @ TLC
PowerPoint, Word, Excel and Outlook officially have a new default font.
Note: As of today I am not seeing the new font used when I open a blank presentation, on both desktop app and PowerPoint online, but it is coming! The Aptos font family is available in the font list, but not used as the default font when opening new, blank documents. Because the Aptos font has officially been announced and released, I think it will be rolled out to everyone within the next few weeks – assuming they are on a Microsoft 365 subscription.
Quick history of the default font in Microsoft Office apps:
From Si Daniels, a principal program manager at Microsoft, “Aptos is a part of a broader wave of features coming to Microsoft 365. We’re pushing to make the software more expressive and inclusive,” explains Daniels. “There’s a newly designed font picker experience, along with new themes, colors, and backgrounds.” More on these over the next few posts!
Other notable information about Aptos:
I am excited by this font. The variety of font weights and sizes means a single font can be used throughout a presentation or document and provide visual variety, hierarchy and creativity.
-Troy @ TLC
Some of the TLC Creative presentation design team having some Star Wars inspired fun on this day!
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This is fantastic information! Bookmark it, because at some point, we will all be asked to make a presentation that meets accessibility needs. Stephy put this great video on YouTube, and I am listing it here to let everyone know of it, and to keep it as a reference for our team to find it in the future!
Watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p46jZ0q8blI
Troy @ TLC
PowerPoint tables – good, not good, and many tips on formatting and presenting tables from Troy, Nolan and Sandy on this episode of The Presentation Podcast. Join the conversation entitled “PowerPoint Tables are Not All Bad” here.
There were so many more fantastic slide designs that came from this internal project. A big thank you to Nolan Haims and The Better Deck Deck for the inspiration! We started with a slide design from Lori, and we are ending this series with another of the slides that Lori designed – because creativity is on display here! Using card 42 – Signpost, it takes amazing creativity to envision a signpost that not only replaces bulllets as it tells part of the story, but is a signpost underwater!
