Software Productivity Tips, Hacks, and Cool Apps: The Presentation Podcast Episode #35

Episode #35, Software Productivity Tips, Hacks, and Cool Apps for the Busy Designer is live!

After last episode’s kvetch session, we’re back to practical solutions, including software solutions and tips outside of PowerPoint. Take a listen to hear about those small little things that ave us hours of time and let us do our jobs the best we can.

Oh, and I have a little announcement at the top of the show as well…

Don’t forget to give us a rating on iTunes if you like the Podcast and want to help spread the word!

Subscribe on iTunes and check out the show notes for more info.

Categories: Design, PowerPoint.

Linking to a Specific YouTube Video Section

I’m late to the game here, but just learned that you can link to a specific part of a YouTube video.

While we always recommend downloading and embedding a video into your presentation to avoid bandwidth and connectivity issues (KeepVid.com is one of my favorite tools to create a local version of a YouTube video), if you absolutely must play from a live link, there’s no reason you can’t start your video exactly where you want to. Here’s how…

Simply append the following to the end of your YouTube link:

“&t=2m5s”

Replace the minute and second markers with whatever you need, and that’s pretty much it.

So, to skip my preamble tribute to Hans Rosling in this tutorial and get right to the meat of it, you would use the following hyperlink:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZhmmhveYJg&t=1m1s

Categories: Video.

PowerPoint MVP Again

Always happy to get the Microsoft MVP package in the mail!

Categories: PowerPoint.

PowerPoint Frustrations: The Presentation Podcast Episode #34

Episode #34, Yes, PowerPoint Frustrates Us is live!

Join Sandy, Troy and I for a kvetch session, but one hopefully that contains some answers and helpful tips to navigate around what bugs us most about PowerPoint.

Oh, and I have a little announcement at the top of the show as well…

Don’t forget to give us a rating on iTunes if you like the Podcast and want to help spread the word!

Subscribe on iTunes and check out the show notes for more info.

Categories: Design, PowerPoint.

Yes to Bullet Graphs

I love Bullet Graphs and loved this guest post by Billy Dean over at Storytelling with Data.

In my training sessions, I teach people how to turn a dreaded clustered column chart into a bullet graph with just a few clicks. If you haven’t used them, you should be…

Categories: Showing Data.

The Power of a List

A visual will almost always trump text, but sometimes text functions as a visual itself. The other day a client who offers a SaaS product called asking if there was a better way to show feature options across various versions than his current tabled list. I can’t show his list, but it was very similar to this from Quicken:

We’ve all seen things like this and the reason is that things like this work quite well in quickly comparing and contrasting in order to make a decision. This is a time when simple checkmarks or missing checkmarks serves as a highly informative visual story.

Today I received an email from Jim Johnson, a New Jersey gubernatorial candidate contrasting himself with his primary challenger. And I loved it. It was nearly all text, but the repetition of Murphy’s limited diversity of experience was easily readable and served as a glanceable visual with a big story.

Sometimes a table is simply the best choice. And sometimes text does communicate visually.

Categories: Design, Information Design, Storytelling.

Deposit, Terms and $: The Presentation Podcast Episode #28

Episode #28, Deposit, Terms and $ for Presentation Design is live!

This week we’re all releasing our tax returns so listeners can fully understand any conflicts of interest we might have. Just kidding. We’re not doing that either. But we are talking all about how we do business and charge for presentation design: deposits, payment terms, discounts, penalties, rush rates, our favorite contract clauses and much more.

Don’t forget to give us a rating on iTunes if you like the Podcast and want to help spread the word!

Subscribe on iTunes and check out the show notes for more info.

Categories: Design, PowerPoint.

A Fun Game to Teach Kerning

Kerning separates the pros from the amateurs for sure. Here’s a fun online game that teaches what it’s all about.

Categories: Design.

1-Day Presentation Guru Conference July 7, 2017

My friends at Presentation Guru are holding a 1-day presentation conference this July at the Globe Theatre in London.

Unlike other conferences, this will be far more hands on and designed for a small number of groups who will get personalized attention from a team of presentation experts.

Categories: Pitching, PowerPoint, Presenting Live, Storytelling.

When Do You Say No to a Project?: The Presentation Podcast Episode #27

Episode #27, When Do You Say No to a Project? is live.

Do we take on every presentation job that comes our way? Not exactly. This week we’ll discuss red flags, managing client requests, horror stories and other tales from the front.

Don’t forget to give us a rating on iTunes if you like the Podcast and want to help spread the word!

Subscribe on iTunes and check out the show notes for more info.

Categories: Design, PowerPoint.