Presentation Matters

Exchanging ideas on communication, public speaking, presentations and slide design

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Entries Tagged as 'PowerPoint'

Using the iPad for presentations

August 6th, 2010 · 1 Comment · Apple Keynote, iPad, PowerPoint

Having recently bought an iPad I am excited about the prospect of using it to give my talks. I haven’t used it yet and am anxious about how the whole thing works. Is it as good as using a laptop? My 17″ MacBook Pro is heavy, so being able to project my slides using a [...]

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Send me your best slides!

November 18th, 2009 · No Comments · Great design, PowerPoint

Loads of people are reading the blog but few comments are coming in, so in order to try to get some interaction going, why not send me a couple of examples of your slides. Send me examples of slides that you think are either really good or particularly bad. If you present regularly, why not [...]

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Presentation error:
Don’t use other peoples’ slides!

November 11th, 2009 · No Comments · PowerPoint, Things to avoid, Uncategorized

I took a short cut today and used some data supplied by a colleague.

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Color picker for PowerPoint (Windows)

November 2nd, 2009 · No Comments · Good PowerPoint design, PowerPoint, PowerPoint add-in

It seems that the Windows version of PowerPoint doesn’t have the eyedropper/color picker thing that the Mac version has.

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Choosing the correct color scheme

November 1st, 2009 · 2 Comments · Designer worth noting, Garr Reynolds, Good PowerPoint design, Images, PowerPoint

This is something overlooked by presenters – how do you choose complementary colors for your presentations to give them maximum impact? Garr Reynolds has just posted a very useful piece about color schemes.

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Grabbing images for PowerPoint

October 16th, 2009 · No Comments · Digital assets, Microsoft Expression Media, PowerPoint, Screengrab, Snagit

I received an email today about a program called Snagit, which allows you to capture images from the web and elsewhere, store them, annotate and add arrows and other things to them.

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Making slides even simpler improves
communication

October 13th, 2009 · No Comments · Apple Keynote, Communication, PowerPoint, Simple design

I know it’s a matter of taste, but I have been stripping all the bling out of my PowerPoint slides and using incredibly simple designs.

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Poor PowerPoint template design

August 20th, 2009 · No Comments · Bad design, PowerPoint

I have been asked to give a talk at a corporate meeting. There are several speakers, each presenting on a different topic. Rather than allow us the freedom to use our own slides, they don’t trust us and have imposed horrible templates for us to use. These are grim because (a) they use the standard [...]

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Another type of slide to end your presentation

June 30th, 2009 · No Comments · Apple Keynote, Handouts, PowerPoint

If you are uncomfortable simply using a black slide at the end of your talk, why not advertise your email address? This means you don’t have to hand out your business cards! Instead, the audience can jot down your address and contact you if thety have any further questions they want to ask you. I [...]

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Elements of good PowerPoint design

June 18th, 2009 · 1 Comment · PowerPoint, Presentation Zen

I have just spotted a fantastic presentation by Alexander Osterwalder with a very zen-like approach to getting your message across. Astonishingly he uses 135 slides in the deck which you would imagine is way too much – but it works perfectly. Watching presentations like this is like a breath of fresh air but writing slides [...]

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