New episode release at The PowerPoint Blog!
This episode, the conversation is about visual design and the application of visual thinking and communication in management and leadership. It involves using visual aids, metaphors, and storytelling to convey a vision and engage an audience effectively. As Todd Churches explains, leadership is about having a vision of a better future and communicating that vision so others can see it too!
Listen here.
In this podcast episode, Troy, Nolan, Sandy, and guest Stephy Hogan delve into the intricacies of where familiar Adobe tools are in PowerPoint. Stephy’s new book, “The Reluctant Designer’s Field Guide to PowerPoint” is now available, and is an amazing resource for both Adobe designers working in PowerPoint, and PowerPoint designers moving to Adobe Creative Suite apps. This episode is a treasure trove of insights and tips, listen now!
Join the conversation through your favorite podcast app, or at the episode 210 webpage that includes the shownotes, links to resources, and photos!
I made a quick mini-presentation video of my 2024 Presentation Summit mini-presentation that was part of the “AI Showdown”.
Troy @ TLC
At the 2024 Presentation Summit conference I was invited to be part of a fun event, “The AI for Presentation Showdown”. The goal was 5 event presenters each had 4 minutes to display a real-world application of an AI tool of their choice used for presentation – which could mean presentation design, presentation content creation, etc.
My AI tool was using Microsoft CoPilot, from within PowerPoint, to provide a 3rd party/unbiased review of the presentation and provide a summary of the content, based on the slide content. The prompt was simply “Summarize this presentation”. The idea is to review with the presenter and see if the external summary of the presentation message aligned with the message they planned.
I think this is a great use of AI as it provides an unbiased review and summary, which is a great conversation starter.
(note: I intended to have a video of my portion of this talk, but sadly no video was captured…)
Troy @ TLC
In this episode of the Presentation Podcast, Troy, Nolan and Sandy spend some time with Mike Parkinson, a graphic designer, prolific conference speaker, and the person behind the Build-A-Graphic PowerPoint add-in. We talk about the evolving landscape of presentation design, particularly the role AI tools now play. Mike shares his “3 AI truths”, emphasizing that AI tools enhance productivity and creativity, not threatening jobs. We also cover the importance of understanding the audience, effective storytelling, and common presentation mistakes. Listen to the conversation now!
Join the conversation through your favorite podcast app, or at the episode 207 page, with shownotes.
Click here to listen.
(Troy & Lori recording podcast conversations at the 2022 Presentation Summit)
The 2024 Presentation Summit is coming in less than 30 days! This is an annual event that I book on our calendar to not miss. In fact, I have officially missed only two of the summits throughout its 22 year run (a few, like last year, I was only able to be at for part of the in-person event).
Last week’s episode of The Presentation Podcast with Rick Altman, conference director of the Presentation Summit, Rick offered a registration promo – $75 off to either the in-person event or the virtual event.
If you are planning to attending this year, here is that promo/discount code (that we are making available to all PowerPoint blog readers!):
Both Lori and myself (Troy) of TLC Creative will be in attendance, so say hello!
Event registration is here: https://betterpresenting.com/summit24/registration
Rick Altman and The Presentation Summit have been a part of the presentation industry landscape for 22 years. But the 2024 edition of the annual conference is being labelled, “The Last Hurrah.” Join Troy, Nolan, and Sandy for a conversation with Rick about this year’s Presentation Summit, and hear insights into what attendees can look forward to ̶ at “The Last Hurrah”!
Episode 206 released today! Listen here
If you use PowerPoint, having a base understanding of font file types and options is important. A new whitepaper by Microsoft MVP for PowerPoint Julie Terberg, titled “Choosing fonts for PowerPoint templates” is a (free!) great resource. Displaying letters, numbers, and symbols takes layers of complex behind-the-scenes code. And if a non-Microsoft font is used, the complexity becomes more complex – and if the non-Microsoft fonts are not available on that computer, or not recognized on that computer, the slide design can go to $#@!. On this episode Troy, Nolan, and Sandy enjoy time conversing with Julie Terberg about fonts in PowerPoint presentations.
Click here to listen.
Carmen Simon, the cognitive neuroscientist behind the amazing 2016 book Impossible to Ignore now introduces a seismic shift to presentation slide design planning and execution with her latest book, Made You Look. Based on her extensive research on how people retain presented information, this is a textbook worth internalizing if you present or design slides. Inspirationally designed and rich in content, readers will rethink how they approach presentation flow and content design. On this episode, Troy, Nolan, and Sandy have a great time talking with Dr. Simon about how to make presentations memorable!
Fonts are the unsung heroes of PowerPoint design, shaping the way we perceive and engage with content. Our July 11 post was focused on the mayhem of unintended fonts that accumulate in PowerPoint slide decks. We received several questions about the blog posts’ opening animated graphic, which directly relates to this – the choice of what font to use.
Designers invest a lot of time carefully testing and experimenting to select the perfect font for each project. However, if you read our deep-dive into the subject of PowerPoint’s font mayhem situation, you might have wondered why we used “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” as our example? It is the most famous pangram in English as it contains all 26 letters of the alphabet. Using pangrams for font selection is extremely helpful since every letter is displayed making font selection a bit easier. Of course, the sentence is also short so it’s easy to view, and to remember.
Fun Fact: the pangram is commonly mistaken for “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.” But that is incorrect because “jumped” instead of “jumps” excluding the letter “S” being represented.
By understanding the nuances of font selection and leveraging this quick and easy to use pangram, it makes font selection for PowerPoint templates and presentations much more visual, which the TLC Creative team always finds easier to work with!