PowerPoint

A Look Back, and an Updated Version of our “It’s a Small Social Media World” Animation

We pulled the original PowerPoint slides from our archives and did a makeover to the animation. In 2014, we posted 4 slides we designed as part of a client presentation. Great layouts, clean messaging, and engaging animation!

Here is the 2019 version of the slides and animation:

For 2025, the first thing was updating the social media logos and icons to companies that are still available (that is a good history lesson!).

Next was revising some aspects of the animation – although the original motion was great (!) it was a complex combination of motion paths and other animations. Morph was introduced in 2016 – 2 years after we created this animation. So our updated version leverages morph for almost all of the motion and animation.

Because we are continuously integrating video into presentations as design elements, we updated the slide styling with 2 embedded videos that are seamlessly integrated into the design (eg. the videos are part of the graphics and not seen as a “video”).

And here is our 2025 version of “It’s a Small Social Media World”:

-The TLC Creative design team

By |2025-06-26T07:46:22-07:00June 13th, 2025|PowerPoint|

PowerPoint Video in a Custom Shape!

Want to make your PowerPoint videos stand out and grab some extra attention? Videos do not need to be limited to the standard rectangle. Imagine a video playing inside a circle, a star, a speech bubble, or even a custom shape! It really adds a creative touch that feels way more immersive.  

Typically, all videos are inserted onto a slide as a rectangle.

Videos can be cropped, resized, and positioned anywhere on the slide – all using native PowerPoint features. Videos can also have styling effects applied; drop shadow, outline, recolored, etc. – also all using native PowerPoint features. 

Change the Shape 

Now for the fun part. Change the rectangle into something else. Native to PowerPoint is the ability to change to any of the shapes in the Shape Library; circle, triangle, parallelogram, 3D cube – pick whatever you like! Select the video > go to Video Format > open the Video Shape selection > pick a shape!  

All of the PowerPoint shapes work flawlessly, automatically masking a video to that shape. So don’t hold back! Video shapes, just like the rectangle, can be customized with a border or effect. How about an oval video? 

Or how about a thought bubble (using PowerPoint’s preset thought bubble shape)? 

TIP: use the CROP tool to resize and reposition the video within the new shape. 

Add a Video to a Custom Shape 

The basic PowerPoint shapes are nice, but what about a complex shape with multiple parts or a logo? With the use of the Merge Shapes tool and a vector graphic as the custom shape, virtually anything is possible. For example, let’s make a video play inside this shape. 

  • First, add the video to the slide (Insert > Video) 
  • Add then add the custom vector art to the slide.
    • NOTE: This must be a vector art file (eg. .SVG)
    • TIP: If the Merge Shapes step below does not work, select the shape(s), copy, delete (yes, it’s okay to delete), then “Paste Special” and select “SVG”
  • Resize and move both the shape and the video to the desired placement. Keep the vector art on top of the video.

  • Select the video first, then hold Shift and select the shape (the order you select the shapes is critical to this working). 
  • Go to Merge Shapes > Intersect. 

Now your video takes the shape of whatever you picked. Use the Crop tool to adjust the size and position of the video as needed. 

 

And that’s it! It’s a great effect, all done within PowerPoint, and can definitely level up your slide and impress the audience! 

-Mike, and the TLC Creative design team 

By |2025-06-26T07:48:09-07:00June 9th, 2025|PowerPoint, Tutorial|

A Look Back – 40 lines of PowerPoint Amazing Animation

During the crazy year that was 2020, we at TLC Creative had several internal design challenges. This particular challenge was to create a dynamic PowerPoint animation – using just 40 lines. The premise was simple: take five slides, integrate exactly 40 lines, and build something visually captivating and animated – in under two hours of design time. 

Making it Happen 

The rules were flexible and open to interpretation to encourage lots of creativity, while keeping the focus of the slideshow on the lines themselves. Each line could vary in color, length, position, arrangement, width, etc. All that mattered was that the 40 lines were the centerpiece of the animation! 

The result of the design team’s creations was a mesmerizing two-minute sequence, built entirely within PowerPoint, that showcased the power of simple design elements when thoughtfully animated. 

The Update 

If you go back to the original blog post, the animation from five years ago was rendered in 480p resolution (not certain why – but it was). We remastered it in full 1080p, to bring a fresh level of clarity to the line movements and transitions – along with a fun upbeat music track.

What began as a small challenge turned into a showcase of how a tool like PowerPoint can be pushed to create Adobe-style animations! 

Final Thoughts 

This project gave us a reminder that creativity thrives under constraints. Sometimes, setting a few boundaries can create the perfect environment for creative breakthroughs! 

-Troy and the TLC Creative Design Team

By |2025-06-26T07:48:49-07:00June 6th, 2025|Portfolio, PowerPoint|

CreativePro Week (We have a Discount code!)

CreativePro Week is a fantastic event, that has gotten even better in recent years with the addition of PowerPoint and presentation design to its topic list. As the event taglines say, “The How-To conference for CreativePros – Five days. Zero regrets. – Join your tribe at CreativePro week”

On our latest episode of The Presentation Podcast, David Blatner, the director of CreativePro, joined the hosts to talk about the conference and the broader CreativePro network. It was a fantastic conversation packed with presentation designer talk – listen to it here!

The Presentation Podcast Exclusive Discount!!

First, this is a special treat for anyone that wants to attend virtually! David shared a discount code for listeners of The Presentation Podcast – and we’re sharing it here . Use the code PRESENTATION during registration for $100 off your registration (again, only if registering as a virtual attendee, I couldn’t get David to offer up a discount for the in-person event, which I believe is near capacity).

Get all the details about the event, and register at CreativePro Week.

-Troy @TLC Creative

By |2025-05-05T06:51:42-07:00May 16th, 2025|PowerPoint|

Present a PowerPoint Presentation – using Teams PowerPoint

Running a presentation has become more complex. For example, if the presentation is stored on Microsoft Teams, there are 3 ways to open a presentation! Open in PowerPoint for Teams, Open in PowerPoint for Web, or open in desktop PowerPoint.

For this conversation, we are going to open the presentation in Teams PowerPoint, and present using Teams Presenter View. This will, in almost all instances, be presented during a Microsoft Teams meeting. To clarify, this is not using a screen share to add the slides to the meeting!

First, the presentation file needs to be stored on Microsoft Teams (which is either SharePoint or OneDrive, depending on your M365 account)

Our preferred option is to copy the presentation to a Teams project ahead of the meeting. The other option is done within PowerPoint: with the presentation open, click the “M365” icon in the top right.

And from the pop-up menu, click SAVE.

Note: there is an upload process (eg., a pause) before the presentation can be presented.

Now in the Teams meeting

• Share Content: Click “Share content” in the upper right meeting controls.

• DO NOT select a share screen option
• The POWERPOINT LIVE section lists a selection of presentations from the account OneDrive
• If the presentation is not in the PowerPoint Live list, scroll to the bottom and select BROWSE ONEDRIVE


• Optional: if the presentation has audio, use the INCLUDE SOUND if needed

Teams Presenter View

The presenter now sees the Teams Presenter View as their view of the Teams meeting. The attendees only see the slide in the red outline (they do not see the Presenter View interface, slide “film strip”, or Presenter Notes.
• Navigation: Use the Presenter View navigation buttons, keyboard arrow keys, or a PowerPoint slide remote

TIPS:
If you have 2 monitors, from where you are presenting, and want to see more of the attendees’ webcams or keep the meeting chat separate from Presenter View, use the POP OUT feature. Then position the Teams meeting itself on one monitor and the Teams Presenter View on the other monitor.

Access more options: Select “More actions” to show/hide notes, use a laser pointer, etc.

The Teams Presenter View has a thumbnail “Film Strip” similar to PowerPoint for Mac.

WARNING

By default, Microsoft Teams shares ALL the slides with attendees! Attendees can click ahead of the presenter, AND attendees can download the full presentation (ugh, and ugh!!)

This includes viewing slides in slide sorter – and viewing hidden slides!

DO THIS

To turn off the option for attendees to independently navigate through a PowerPoint, use the PRIVATE VIEW toggle to turn off these options.

FINAL NOTE

Microsoft has done an amazing job of optimizing the bandwidth needs when presenting within the Teams ecosystem (eg. presentation presented through Teams and attendees viewing in a Teams meeting). Back in 2020 Microsoft’s Jeremy Chapman posted a video showcasing how Teams has amazing bandwidth savings vs screen sharing a presentation. More info in our May 19, 2020 post here.

 

-Troy and the TLC Creative Design Team

By |2025-05-13T18:22:01-07:00May 14th, 2025|PowerPoint|

Old Fonts, New Place!

This is big news for graphic designers and any creative professionals using Adobe products! Adobe has recently updated Adobe Fonts with over 1,500 new fonts, the most significant addition in recent years, including industry staples such as Helvetica, Gotham, Avenir, Times New Roman, and Proxima Nova! The best part? Each and every font is now included for all Creative Cloud subscribers.   

Forget about hunting for licenses and dealing with “missing fonts” notifications in Photoshop, Illustrator, or InDesign. Everything is now synced and ready to be used, vastly improving the design workflow.

Read the entire announcement on Adobe’s blog. 

And yes, PowerPoint can use Adobe CC Fonts! Read this blog post that has details.  

By |2025-05-05T06:51:35-07:00May 9th, 2025|PowerPoint|

Low Res .SVG with Morph Animation

PowerPoint’s Morph transition is just about to turn 10! Ever since it was introduced back in 2016, the TLC Creative team has written dozens of posts on The PowerPoint Blog, and Troy has covered it in many speaking sessions and trainings. Go ahead – search “Morph” on our blog for several tutorials and demos of PowerPoint morph transition.

But the real post today is about one issue Morph has (and spoiler alert: it’s STILL not fixed). Content displays low-res when growing during the transition (ugh!)

Option 1 – Imported .SVG Graphics

Although your icon or shape might be vector, PowerPoint will substitute a pixelized .PNG during the tweening of the transition. This is why it looks a little fuzzy.

In the above example, notice how the icon starts crisp and ends with no quality loss when sized larger. However, during the morph, it goes a little fuzzy.

So why is this? An .SVG has a .PNG placeholder for display. The animation is animating the smaller .PNG image to the larger, and then updated to the actual .SVG again after the transition – hence a low res appearance of the small image growing to much larger.

Option 2 – PowerPoint Shapes

So, let’s try another technique. Create a shape directly from PowerPoint. In this case, the Not Allowed symbol.

We know these shapes are vector based and that they will resize larger with no distortion. However, the morph transition still does not like that. You’ll get the same distorted animation process going vector, to raster, and back to vector.

So, what else can we try?

Option 3 – Grow-Shrink Animation

This technique example will use one of PowerPoint pre-set animations – the Grow and Shrink.

Unfortunately, this result is even worse when applied. As you can see from the above example, even though it is a vector shape, the tweening and end result are very distorted. And stays that way! The Grow-Shrink animation does not convert the shape back into a vector when finished. You’re stuck with a fuzzy image.

Option 4 – Ungrouped .SVG Shapes

As we discovered, a solid .SVG file will distort when growing larger during a morph. What about breaking up, or ungrouping an .SVG that is made from several elements? In the example below, there are two ungrouped vector items. You’ll notice that the virus icon on the left morphs fairly smoothly. There is still distortion during the transition, but the shapes generally stay intact. The robot on the right is a different story. It’s not as symmetrical and contains some unique shapes. The head shape especially, and PowerPoint does not quite know how to convert it properly.

Overall, there really is not a perfect solution to avoid a fuzzy morph. When designing these types of transitions, just keep in mind you’re going to have some subtle distortion. Speeding up the timing of the transition will help visually, but in reality, it still doesn’t solve the overall issue.

-Troy and the TLC Creative design team

By |2025-05-01T21:16:32-07:00May 2nd, 2025|PowerPoint|

Many Charts, 1 Legend To Rule Them All!

Presentations are meant to communicate ideas clearly and effectively, but too often, slides are cluttered with redundant elements that distract and hide the information to be conveyed. And as we look at charts this month, we find that they are often full of unneeded visual distraction. But this is a specialty scenario where the slide content with multiple charts creates opportunity to simplify the visual elements.

Three Charts: Three Legends

In this presentation, many slides had multiple charts, and each one included its own legend. At first glance, this might seem harmless—after all, each chart needs a legend, right? But in reality, this redundancy forces your audience to process the same information multiple times, making it harder to focus on what actually matters: the data trends and insights.

Our design goal is to remove adds unnecessary visual clutter and enable to audience to process the slide and quickly identify the message. The layout is good. All the charts visually align, accurately display the same Y axis metric, have the same color coding ̶ and have the same legend.

Three Charts: A Unified Legend

Because the legend is identical, instead of repeating it three times, we streamlined the slide by using just one legend beneath all three charts. This simple adjustment immediately reduces the visual clutter and makes it easier for the audience to focus on the data.

We are happy with this “1 Legend To Rule Them All” update. Which was similarly done on many other slides in this presentation. The cognitive load is reduced, and the message comes across quicker and clearer.

Why This Works

  • Improves Readability – A cleaner layout allows the audience to process information faster.
  • Reduces Redundancy – Eliminates unnecessary repetition, keeping attention on the data.
  • Enhances Aesthetics – A well-organized slide looks more professional and engaging.
  • Guides the Audience – With less distraction, viewers can focus on what’s important.
  • Small Tweaks, Big Impact
  • Great slide design isn’t about adding more—it’s about removing what doesn’t serve the message. By centralizing your legend, you create a more effective and visually appealing slide that helps your audience focus on what truly matters: the insights behind your data.

The TLC Creative presentation design team always takes a step back and asks: Are there unnecessary repeating elements? A little decluttering can go a long way in making a slideshow presentation more impactful.

– Christie on the TLC Creative design team

By |2025-06-26T07:55:25-07:00April 30th, 2025|PowerPoint, Tutorial|

Create Charts for Video and Print Projects in PowerPoint – Really!

Charts can be a powerful visual for any presentation to really make a memorable, or easily understandable, point. When you think about colorful bar, line and pie charts, everyone immediately thinks of PowerPoint slides. What about adding charts to a print or video project that is designed in Adobe InDesign or Premiere? While PowerPoint has robust chart and bar graph-building features, most print and video software do not.

InDesign is amazing for layout and print design, but it relies on charts and tables being important elements. The same for Adobe video editing software, Premiere. Charts, tables, and most all elements in a video are designed outside the app and imported.

And this need for externally created charts is where PowerPoint comes in. Whether you’re working on a print layout or editing a video that needs to look polished and professional, PowerPoint is ideal for building visuals that can easily be edited and exported for use in other software.

Step 1: Create a Chart in PowerPoint

All natively created charts in PowerPoint have a mini Excel sheet for the data.

And PowerPoint is truly one of the best tools for creating charts, including the option to use the data and instantly change from a bar chart to pie charts, line graphs, stacked or scatter plot. And all charts use the preset color scheme applied to that slide deck. Update the PowerPoint color scheme and all charts in the slide deck instantly update! It’s easy to style your data with colors, fonts, and labels. And since you’re doing it inside PowerPoint, it’s all very visual.

Step 2: Export the Chart as an Image for Print

Once your chart is sized and styled to what is needed in the print design, export it as an image for use in Adobe InDesign or Illustrator.

1. Click on the chart to select it.

2. Right-click and choose Save as Picture.

3. Choose PNG, which creates a static image of the chart with a transparent background.

4. Or choose SVG to create a static image of the chart that is a full vector format – great for pulling into an Adobe Illustrator project.

5. Import the new file into your InDesign layout like any other image.

The final result is clean and sharp, and you didn’t have to deal with other clunky chart-building tools and work-arounds.

Step 3: Using PowerPoint Charts in Premiere for Video

If you want to include charts in a video project using Adobe Premiere Pro, you’ve got a couple of options.

Option 1: Static chart image

Just like for print, export your chart as a PNG and bring it into Premiere. From here you can animate it with simple scale or opacity transitions to make the chart more visually appealing. But there is a bit more planning in the export process.

Option 2: Animate inside PowerPoint, export as video

PowerPoint has great animation capabilities, including animating charts. One option is to export the slide as a video (eg. 1920×1080 .MP4) to add to the Premiere video project.  In PowerPoint go to File > Export > Create a Video. Choose either an HD or 4K format.

But the exported video will be the full slide, including the background. If the video project needs to add the chart as a composited element with other elements in the video project, the above chart example was exported as a series of 6 PNG images, added to the Premiere project and each PNG animated with Premiere’s entrance effects. Plan the animation, then in PowerPoint duplicate the chart slide, in this scenario 6Xs. Then go through each slide, deleting the elements that are not part of that stage of the animation.

Using PowerPoint as a design tool is not part of video editing training, but as a someone that has created lots and lots of chart elements for successful print design and video projects, PowerPoint is the right tool. Next time a chart is needed as an imported element for a project, PowerPoint is a go to for both great visuals and saving design time.

– Mike, and the TLC Creative Services design team

By |2025-06-26T07:58:00-07:00April 25th, 2025|PowerPoint, Resource/Misc|

F1 Coolness at Almost 8K!

This week I am having a lot of visual fun working on exciting slides like this

The LED wall is almost 8K in resolution and the slides are designed to fill the screen with a custom “Ultrawide” presentation. But as the presentation approached 2GBs it was time to pause on design and manage the content for an optimized file size. I trust the NXPowerlite add-in to optimize images in presentations, and the Slidewise add-in to give me insights into what images are oversize, if there are unneeded master slide layouts and much more.

But working with 8K wide slides poses some issues for letting NXPowerlite optimize images. I created a custom 8K resolution profile, so any image LARGER than the profiles 7,680px wide (aka 8K) will be automatically re-rendered to that resolution. But what about a slide like this where the two images; the F1 logo and the awesome F1 vehicle are not 8K images, and need to be optimized to their on-screen size?

The answer, for me, is a feature that is part of PowerPoint – but not well known. Here is the process:

  • Copy the image (eg. the race car)
  • Use the Thor Hammer add-in to copy the image size and position
  • Delete the image (yes delete!)
  • Use PowerPoint’s Paste Special > as .PNG (or use the “PNG” icon on my QAT)
  • This adds the original image, but at the size it was copied at (eg. an optimized image!). For the F1 car image it originally as a 8.4 MB image (as reported by Slidewise’s image audit). The pasted in optimized .png is 2.8 MB. Same image, at the pixel size needed, so no quality loss, and over 5MB file size reduction!
  • Last, use Thor’s Hammer to position the new image exactly where the original image was

Yes, it is a manual process with a number of clicks. And yes, it took me approximately 10 minutes, but I went a 2GB file to a 1.5GB file with no qualify loss!

Back to creating amazing slide layouts!

Troy @ TLC

By |2025-04-22T22:49:28-07:00April 23rd, 2025|PowerPoint, Tutorial|
Copyright TLC Creative Services, Inc | All Rights Reserved
Go to Top