Resource/Misc

Presentations can use lots of images. For the random person image, there are many royalty free image sites (eg. legal to use images, not randomly copying an image owned by someone else and adding to a presentation). But in a twist of technology, there is another option.

The “This Person Does Not Exist” website is a never ending display of deep fake people headshots. You do not know what is going to displayed, just keep refreshing the page to get a different image. Also, once an image is gone, you are not going to find it again!

Go to https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/. It is a very simple website. No navigation, menus, or text. Just a photo of a person – that does not exist (more on this in a moment).

What is a “deep fake”? Search the web for details. My simplistic answer is, a deep fake is a photograph generated through AI algorithms that pull details from many photos (many of the source photos already fake images) to composite a new, very realistic looking image. So the above image is literally no one. This is not a real person. He does not exist. And yes, he looks very real (tip: don’t believe any image on social media!).

I said the ThePersonDoesNotExist.com website has no content beyond the photo. But it does. In the lower right is a popup information box that has some information and links to 3 Youtube videos the author of this website created to explain, and inform, what Nvidia’s (yes the graphics card company) Style GAN2 software is. The summary is, StyleGAN2 is the AI system that created all of these very realistic, but fake, people images.

Check out Henry AI Labs video # 1 on YouTube for some fascinating information on how Deep Fake images are created (it is link “1” in the info popup).

So, why include a website like ThePersonDoesNotExist.com on a presentation design blog?

Because of what we started with, presentations need lots of images – people images. I am not speaking with authority here, but if the image is of a person that does not exist, was generated by an AI algorithm and available to anyone with no copyright notice, I am going with the idea that this is a perfect, legal and random “person” image that can be used in a presentation!

The images from this site are 1024×1024, so not quite full screen. They are also in the .jfif file format, which most people have not used (it is a fancy .jpg, just use it).

Jake at the TLC Creative studio created a few example slide layouts with images from this site in use. And the names were created on a name generator site!

Fake names. Fake images. Real slides.

– Troy @ TLC

 

New episode released today! Listen here.

Can a presentation designer be an integral part of the eLearning content development? This episode Troy, Nolan and Sandy talk with Mike Taylor about all things eLearning and focus on how PowerPoint as an app can be integral to the process and how being a presentation designer can make you a valued part of the process.

Join Troy, Nolan and Sandy as they talk about icons; how they use icons in presentation design, how they see others using icons, where to source icons, and when icons should be used – and not used. Join a very geeky designer conversation about what makes design, design! Episode 127 of The Presentation Podcast.

In designing a slide if you find yourself in need of a formless random blob during your creative endeavors, blobs.app has you covered. Shout out to Nolan Haims for cluing us in on this cool tool during a tech tips discussion at The Presentation Podcast!

You can generate blobs of different complexities and randomness, as outlines, color filled, gradients, patterns, even images, and save them as SVG files, or copy the SVG or Flutter code after you’ve created a blob. Modify the variables on the right and click the “Change Blog” button on the left for endless options.

To get this blob into PowerPoint, simply add it as an image, selecting the .svg file you downloaded. Like any .SVG the shape fill, outline, transparency, and styling effects like drop shadow or 3D Rotation can be applied. Further, the blob is a vector shape. Select, ungroup and then right-click and choose Edit Points to modify the shape in any way.

Whether you need some amorphous shapes for buttons, or photos, or something to frame some text, this tool will quickly get you the random shapes you need, and thanks to saving as an SVG file, PowerPoint will let you further modify or format these shapes to meet any of your design needs!

Create your own blobs here.

Josh @ TLC

Microsoft is rolling out 5 new fonts and we couldn’t be more excited! All 5 are Microsoft Cloud Fonts, meaning they are available on every endpoint with Microsoft Office. These are available now and we do not have to worry that a client will not have them and fonts will default to some other randomly assigned font. Windows, Mac, IOS, Android, PowerPoint for the web – these fonts will work for everyone.

Besides showcasing 5 great new options to incorporate into our designs and templates, Microsoft is making waves with news of replacing its long-standing default font, Calibri. Since 2007, Calibri has been the default font for all Microsoft programs including PowerPoint. At its inception, Calibri was designed to perform on lower resolution displays to optimize legibility, using technology that the company no longer uses.

Sample images of each font is below. Each uses the default kerning (space between letters). The top line is with Bold applied, and the lower line with the name of the font is in the standard weight.

Up first on the list is TENORITE, by Erin McLaughlin and Wei Huang. A personal favorite, this font is round and wide, with narrow kerning, making it great for all caps headlines and titles.

Then there is BIERSTADT, by Steve Matteson. A modern take on the mechanical, grid-based style stemming from swiss typography. Tenorite incorporates some organic elements that really makes it stand apart from its institutional roots.

Next up is SKEENA, by John Hudson and Paul Hanslow. With a emphasize on contrast, the font’s distinct variations between thick and thin add a stand-out contender to the list, great for presentations with a lot of copy.

That brings us to SEAFORD, by Tobias Frere-Jones, Nina Stössinger, and Fred Shallcrass. While this the most old-school font of the bunch, there is nothing old about the approach they took designing this font face. Inspired by armchairs, this font is sturdy and worth sitting with for some time.

And last but not least GRANDVIEW, by Aaron Bell. This highly mechanical, German-derived option, is the most rigid of the additions. Grandview retains readability exceptionally compared to it’s ancestors and will be a great option especially when it comes to data visualization.

These fonts are available now and according to the Microsoft press releases, by the end of 2022 one of them will become the default option across all Microsoft programs.

Sara @ TLC

One of our go-to resources is a surprising one – The Alphabitizer (https://alphabetizer.flap.tv) is helpful in many ways. We use it to alphabetize presenter names during a show, organize presentation titles, and more. It also has helpful features like automatically capitalizing names in the list and randomizing items in a list in the case instead of alphabetizing.

First just insert the random list of names, titles, or whatever it is:

Then use the options to the left to perform whatever function is needed. For this example, the goal is the staff names organized by last name.

And voila, a super-quick alphabetized list! The options can be changed one at a time, so the list could be run multiple times until the final list is whatever is needed. For example, it could be run once to alphabetize, once to capitalize, and again to number.

Feedspot is a Content Reader, with the goal is helping us keep up with multiple websites and information sources all in one place. Feedspot also lists and ranks, among other things, podcasts.

In the category of “Presentation Podcasts”, our very own, The Presentation Podcast, ranks #1!

The current top 5 podcasts in the category are…

1. The Presentation Podcast
2. The Presentation Boss Podcast
3. The World of Presentations
4. Fearless Presentation
5. Unforgettable Presentations

Jace @ TLC

Episode 126, Storytelling with Data and Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic, releases today – listen to the conversation here.

Storytelling with Data is one of the best books showing effective ways of showing data in presentations. Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic, author of Storytelling with Data, is one of the authorities on effective Data Viz. And this episode of The Presentation Podcast is a fantastic conversation about Cole’s background, the Storytelling with Data book, and how to approach Data Viz in presentation design.

Further blurring the boundary between native, and web-app development – enter Microsoft Webview2

As more and more apps become cloud-based there is a near seamless transition between desktop and mobile devices. Microsoft has been hard at work on this transition, and the coding challenges it presents for developers.  Enter Edge Webview2, which is only one component of Microsoft’s much larger Project Reunion. Project Reunion is an initiative to modernize and evolve Windows Application and Webapp development with a new set of unified tools and API’s.

So, what does webview2 do? Simply put, it allows you to add web content, HTML, CSS, Javascipt, etc. into your native applications. Native apps for each OS; Windows, Mac, IOS, Android, etc., each have differing coding languages and requirements. But Webview2 allows developers to use consolidated language base, coding for the web, and have a native application use that code – on any platform. It is easy to see why Microsoft would want to enable simplifying things in this way now that the O365 suite has essentially become a set of hybrid apps (they run on desktop, but require internet access for components of their functionality – or the same app can run, with almost 100% features, as a web app).

On the obvious side, why is there a “2” in the name? Because there is already a “Webview.” The question is, how is Webview2 different from Webview?  Webview2 is Chromium based (vs. a more proprietary Windows based language).  Chromium  is an industry-standard for code and development. The part that made the “new” Microsoft Edge web browser new, is that it is now based on Chromium (basically Microsoft stopped its proprietary code language development and used the industry standard and open source Chromium language).  Microsoft does make it clear that Webview2 does not mean Microsoft Edge needs to be installed. But Microsoft Edge is what renders all Webview2 content, so even if it is not installed as a web browser, it is running behind the scenes, albeit with a little more stealth, running anything utilizing Webview2. For software development with the goal of developing both native and webapps, and native apps that are cross platform, Webview2 makes that effort far less daunting.

So why the timing of this blog post now? Because Microsoft started pushing out the runtime to Windows PC’s starting April 1^st and it has now been released for general availability. So Webview2 is now open to all developers.  If you want to get into more of the technical documentation, look at the Overview and Roadmap for detailed information.

For PowerPoint, we don’t have a list of any features that are specifically Webview2 coded. I imagine many of the new features, those that are available in PowerPoint for Web, but not the desktop version are leveraging this new coding option. It will definitely make it easier for the Microsoft team in maintaining functionality and feature set parity across platforms without having to develop everything from the ground up, two, three or five times. Stay tuned, because even if we do not directly see Webview2, no matter what platform we are using PowerPoint on, we certainly will be using features that are leveraging the features Webview2 enables.

Josh @ TLC