Resource/Misc

With a whole month of COVID Challenges under the team’s belt, it seemed time to work on something more timely! Building off the previous design challenge (where our design team worked from files hosted in a Microsoft Teams team), we decided to explore the collaborative features of Microsoft Teams even more. The TLC Design Team was sent this prompt (via a designated channel in Teams!) to start the week:

Welcome to Challenge 5! In the Files tab, you’ll see a single slide with a chart comparing the number of COVID-19 tests performed to date with the number of confirmed cases being reported. Each of you will pick one country and design those two bars of the chart. The goal is to focus on two things: design (do something amazingly creative with your piece of the chart) and communication (work together as a team to determine how you’re going to go about sharing the work). 

Key takeaways: the final design will be just 1 slide that all 6 designers worked on, and it will all be done with Microsoft Teams’ collaborative environment.

This is what our designer team was given to work with (in Microsoft Teams, of course):

Check back in a couple days for the incredible results!

It’s official: PowerPoint has made its first major addition the Ribbon interface since its inception with PPT 2007. The addition provides no additional functionality, but it does greatly speed up production and design! It is the seemly simple, but wonderful, tabs for the right action pane, called “Tabbed Panes.”    

As a task pane is opened, a tab for it is included along the right column. To change which tab is available, click the icons. Tabs are not closed unless you click the X icon. Tabs include: Format, Animation, Selection Pane, Comments, and Version History.

There are a few things to note with this added feature: first, you must have 2 or more task panes open to see the tabs; just one will appear just as it always has. Also, there is a nice interface to allow side-by-side view of multiple tabs you select (as example, I often have the animation and selection pane tabs open side-by-side when working on a complex animation). View the tab you want on the “left” and select “move out of tab”.

It is still possible to make any pane undock and become free floating (as example, to place on a second monitor).

However you choose to arrange your panels, here’s a tip: to navigate to a pane with keyboard, double-tap press F6 – first to focus on the active pane, and second to focus on the tab icons. Use the up/down arrow keys to select different tabs, and then press enter to bring them to front.

This is a great update that increases the usability of PowerPoint even more. However, I have a few questions in to Microsoft: What is the official name of these “tabs”? When were they added? How do we see multiple task panes side-by-side now (It is common to have the animation and selection panes open at the same time)? Can the tabs be preset to be present when PPT is launched?

Reference information: https://blog-insider.office.com/2020/02/20/improved-pane-management/

Troy @ TLC

A new episode of The Presentation Podcast is available today! Troy, Nolan and Sandy talk with Jackie Gartner-Schmidt in depth about how the voice works and provide tips for presenters (rappers, sport enthusiasts and more). Listen on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify and Soundcloud – or search The Presentation Podcast for “Presenting with Your Voice (w/ Jackie Gartner-Schmidt of Voice Now)” or go direct to the episode page here: https://thepresentationpodcast.com/podcast/103

TLC Creative has been using Microsoft Teams extensively. We are sharing this info packed 1-sheet we created. It is how to use Microsoft Teams as a real-world user. Download the PDF and send us a note on if it was helpful.

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A new episode of The Presentation Podcast is available today! Troy, Nolan and Sandy share their learnings of working on a co-authored presentation, hosted on Microsoft Teams. 

…if I’m going to get dragged kicking and screaming into the world of (Microsoft) Teams, I’m happy to have you do it.
– Nolan Haims in an email to Troy Chollar

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify and Soundcloud – just search for The Presentation Podcast for “Being a Remote Presenter (with Ken Molay)” or go direct to the episode page here: https://thepresentationpodcast.com/podcast/102

A new episode of The Presentation Podcast is available today! Troy, Nolan and Sandy are joined by Richard Goring of BrightCarbon, Mike Parkinson of Billion Dollar Graphics, and Cliff Kennedy of Kennedy Speech Communications for a great episode! This conversation is about slide design and presenting techniques of remote presenting.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify and Soundcloud – just search for The Presentation Podcast for “Being a Remote Presenter (with Ken Molay)” or go direct to the episode page here: https://thepresentationpodcast.com/podcast/101

With this challenge, not only did our design team have to put together some amazing design, but they had to do it all working in Microsoft Teams! So part of this design challenge was our design team all being forced into the world of Microsoft Teams for file management (we have been using Teams for calls, meetings and presenting, but now transitioning to incorporating it file management, editing and communication). 

For our design challenge #4 a master slide deck was uploaded to the Teams project “channel”. Slide 1 was the base boring bullet list of black text on a white background. Each designer had an assigned slide, with zero design applied.

Each designer was challenged to develop their own slide with the same base content, but any layout and visuals they envisioned. Again, based on a Microsoft Teams workflow, the catch was all design had to be done from the shared presentation. No downloading, and not keeping the file connected to the Teams version!

Work from the master slide deck on Microsoft Teams. Slide 1 is the content, and everyone has a slide for design assigned. Develop your version of an original (boring) slide with images, graphics, and visual layout. Use any color scheme and font options, but no animation needed. You cannot download the PowerPoint file to your computer, you can work directly in Teams version of PowerPoint, PowerPoint online or PowerPoint on your computer – but it must always be worked on as a shared file.

Check back later this week to see what each design did to turn the boring slide content to a WOW slide!

I am very proud of the creativity on our design team. Our internal COVID-19 design challenge put that creativity to the test. The design team was presented with a few design parameters, a simple and very vague slide animation request, and given 2 hours to create amazing. See you Monday with the results!

Here is COVID Design Challenge #3, “40 Lines”. The full name should be “40 lines and 5 slides”. Creating a dynamic animation with 40 lines across the 5 slides. The lines can be any color, any length, any position, any arrangement, any width. Additional content or accent graphics can be added to the slides, but the 40 lines need to be the star.