PowerPoint

As an internal design project we explored creating custom PowerPoint color schemes (that can also be applied to other Office apps such as Excel and Word). A custom color scheme (this is not a full tutorial) is created by selecting a master slide (if there are multiple master slides in a presentation, each can have their own preset color scheme) and going to DESIGN > VARIANTS > COLORS > CUSTOMIZE COLOR.

For this internal exercise, the design team picked a “classic movie”, found a reference image, and assembled a color scheme that they felt aligned with the movie. The results were so good, we had to share a few of the creations! This is a 6 part blog series, highlighting 6 classic movies (note, “classic movie” as interpreted by our design team!) and the corresponding custom PowerPoint color schemes. And, each will be downloadable 🙂

To start things off, from Christie, is a true classic – the original Wizard of Oz.

Wizard of Oz: warm saturated tones. Greens and yellow taken from the main focal point of the emerald city and yellow brick road. The reds, blue and brown mainly from Dorothy’s aesthetic, hair, dress, and shoes.

Download the PowerPoint deck with preset color scheme here.

Adobe Illustrator’s “Lock Object” has been something I have dreamt about having in PowerPoint for years. Well it has finally happened!

Here is my example slide. Lots of overlapping images. I am certain everyone can think of several reasons the ability to lock one, a few, or all of the objects in place so they cannot be accidently moved would be a good thing.

For this example I want to lock the upper right image from being able to be moved. It is labelled “Bubbles” in the Selection Pane.

In the selection pane to the right of the visibility icon is a new padlock icon. Currently the “Bubbles” image is unlocked. That means selecting it the standard modified handles are seen, but I want to focus on the rotate modifier.

To lock any object – image, shape, text, media, etc., just click the padlock icon.

The object can still be selected, but it cannot be moved, resized or altered. The rotate modified is replaced with a lock modifier.

This is a huge improvement to PowerPoint’s editing! Some additional observations:

• Locked objects still have animation applied (and a locked object can have new animations applied to it).
• Locked objects can be turned off using the Selection Pane visibility icon.
• Objects on the slide level can be locked.
• Objects on the Master Slide and Master Layouts CANNOT be locked.
• Placeholders, on slides, can be locked.
• Z-order of locked objects can be changed (eg. “bring to front” works).
• Anyone that can edit the slide can unlock an object (if they open the Selection Pane).

Troy @ TLC

Direct from the event website:

“CreativePro Week is the world’s best HOW-TO event for creative professionals who design, create, or edit in Adobe InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, and Microsoft PowerPoint. No matter your skill level, you’ll learn techniques and best practices you can start using immediately to improve your productivity.”

On The Presentation Podcast, episode 125, David Blatner, Director of Creative Pro, joined us for a great conversation. Listen to the conversation here.

CreativePro Week is a virtual event this year (but a live, in-person event again next year) with over 40 expert speakers and more than 100 sessions! CreativePro Week is five days of in-depth training and inspiration. And in a unique option, passes can be 1-5 days with a choose-your-own adventure as to what days and what sessions you attend.

Also of note (for us here at TLC Creative): Friday, May 21st, our very own Troy Chollar of TLC Creative is a presenter  (that is just 1 week from today!). His session is “What’s New with Remote/Virtual Presentations”.

If you have not registered, here is the promo code extended to The Presentation Podcast listeners, for a $100 discount, CPWNH.

Jace @ TLC

The AI powered “Designer” feature is truly fantastic. But, for the TLC Creative design team, we do not have have Designer active by default.

The good news is turning off Designer does not disable it, it just makes the automatic recommendations not happen. So, how do we use it?

From any slide, go to HOME tab > DESIGNER section > and click DESIGN IDEAS. This activates Designer and the Design Ideas pane opens on the right for us to see the AI powered design ideas and use if we want.

Troy @ TLC

TLC Creative is always pushing the limits of PowerPoint. A few years ago, 3D model support was introduced to PowerPoint. TLC Creative leveraged the new file format immediately for a few large corporate events where the end clients had 3D modelling assets available (making those models compatible with Office’s more limited 3D support is another topic).

Always looking to grow our design team’s skills, we are highlighting a little side project Jake on the TLC Creative design team created. This is a Microsoft Office-optimized 3D model of the IBM logo, built from a (non-3D) vector file of the logo, created in Blender.

The fun is twisting, rotating and seeing every angle when a true 3D model is added to a slide! This is a video export from PowerPoint animating the inserted 3D model using morph across a series of slides:

[videopack id=”14646″]https://thepowerpointblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/3D-Model-IBM-Logo-TLC-Creative-Services.mp4[/videopack]

Download the IBM logo slide here.

We just reviewed how to make metallic text with gradients, but we can also use Image Fills to create unique effects as well. We used the following still images from Adobe Stock for this example:

For our first example, we just filled the text with the images. Right-click on your text box and select FORMAT SHAPE. Go to the TEXT OPTIONS tab, then choose PICTURE FILL. What’s great is that the text remains editable, and the image will make itself a pattern to fit as much text as is necessary.

Next we took this image-filled text and added a gradient outline on the text to help jazz it up a little bit. Right-click on your text box and select FORMAT SHAPE. Go to the TEXT OPTIONS tab, then scroll to TEXT OUTLINE. We added a similar gradient from our Metallic Lines post. This helps give the text a literal border, as well as add a little more dimension to the text.

Finally, we added a bevel in addition to the image fill and gradient outline to really elevate the metallic look. Right-click on your text box and select FORMAT SHAPE. Go to the TEXT OPTIONS tab, then the EFFECTS tab. Adjust the bevel depth until you get the effect you’re looking for. We used a deeper bevel to match the bold font.

We’ve reviewed creating metallic effects on shapes and lines, but the real question is – how does it work on text? The answer is, very well and very easily. Adding metallic effects on text is simple to accomplish in PowerPoint, and the best part is that the text will always remain editable even with the effects applied.

To start off, we’re just applying a gradient to the text. Right-click on your text box (important, make sure it’s the text box and not while editing text) and select FORMAT SHAPE. Go to the TEXT OPTIONS tab, and under TEXT FILL, apply a GRADIENT FILL. Here we used a 6-stop gradient to get all the metallic colors, and a 10° angle to get a reflective effect. Download an editable PowerPoint slide with the Gold, Bronze, and Silver metallic text here.

We can further emphasize the metallic effect by adding a bevel onto the text. This can be tricky depending on the font you use – fonts with thin serifs like this one can be problematic with the bevel, but it worked well in this case. Right-click on your text box and select FORMAT SHAPE. Go to the TEXT OPTIONS tab, then the EFFECTS tab. Adjust the bevel depth until you get the effect you’re looking for. Here we used a slightly different gradient for a different look. Download an editable PowerPoint slide with the Gold, Bronze, and Silver metallic text here.

Continuing our exploration of PowerPoint’s capabilities to create metallic effects on shapes, let’s look at how we can create some metallic lines. These are super useful for underline effects, outlines, or other accents in your presentation.

For this first example, we used a very similar gradient to yesterday’s shapes. Select any PowerPoint line, right-click and select FORMAT SHAPE, go to the LINE section, and select the GRADIENT line option. Here we used a linear gradient, 4 gradient stops, but 0 angle. Download an editable PowerPoint slide with the Gold, Bronze, and Silver metallic lines here.

For a more sophisticated metallic look in this example, we added more gradient stops (7 total) with darker colors. The thinner lines also create a more elegant look. Again, create any PowerPoint line, right-click and select FORMAT SHAPE, go to the LINE section, and select the GRADIENT line option. Download an editable PowerPoint slide with the Gold, Bronze, and Silver metallic lines here.

We can make these lines even more convincingly metallic with the same bevel trick that we used with the shapes. The gradient used here is similar to the above 7-stop gradient, with a bevel effect applied on top. Right-click on your PowerPoint line and select FORMAT SHAPE, go to the EFFECTS tab, and open the 3-D FORMAT options. Manipulate the bevel depth for different effects. Download an editable PowerPoint slide with the Gold, Bronze, and Silver metallic lines here.