Resource/Misc

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

Listen to episode 122 of The Presentation Podcast for details on our give away of 5 passes to the Present to Succeed Conference! Present to Succeed is a virtual conference, April 14-16, 2021 with a line up of fantastic presenters. You have until Friday, March 12 to enter (and you can enter as often as you’d like!). Winners announced March 16 on episode 123.

https://thepresentationpodcast.com/podcast/121/

 

A new episode of The Presentation Podcast is available today! Troy, Nolan, and Sandy do a deep dive into PowerPoint’s Backstage talking about what features, options and functionality is there, as well as tips, tricks and discovering new things there they did not know about! 

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify and Soundcloud – or search The Presentation Podcast for “The PowerPoint Backstage Experience” or go directly to the episode page here: https://thepresentationpodcast.com/podcast/110

 

TLC Creative Services has had another successful online conference! This event we provided the presenter Virtual Broadcast Studio to capture and live stream 43 sessions. Our design team assured presenters and their presentations where displayed on a conference branded backplate. Each session had live content switching, session countdown timers, custom presenter intro stinger videos, and more (all produced by the TLC Creative team).

It was a great conference, but it was really worth it when we receive emails like this fantastic note from a very experienced presenter who has not slowed down on the virtual event world – thanks Mike!

A new episode of The Presentation Podcast is available today! The Presentation Summit was a virtual event this year, and a success. Troy, Nolan and Sandy have an opportunity to talk with the Presentation Summit Director, Rick Altman and the Presentation Summit Director of Events, Sheila McGurin the month after the conference. We talk about remote presenting, some of the Presentation Summit statistics, recapping some of our experiences at this year’s virtual conference, and hearing the plans for next years conference.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify and Soundcloud – or search The Presentation Podcast for “The Presentation Summit” or go directly to the episode page here: https://thepresentationpodcast.com/podcast/109