Spicy Presentations

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At least among designers, PowerPoint has a reputation as “not a professional program” in the way that Adobe software is. And while it’s true that Photoshop is a far more powerful image editing program than PowerPoint is, it is not true that PowerPoint can’t do some things just as well as PowerPoint. On a daily basis, I often edit imagery using PowerPoint’s built-in tools because it’s quicker, simpler and also non-destructive.

But the other day I heard a speaker make the case for using PowerPoint for video effects because “users shouldn’t have to buy and learn AfterEffects” if they’re not a professional video editor. And users also shouldn’t have to pay a professional video editor when they can get a usable result on their own using PowerPoint.

That speaker was P-Spice, someone I’ve known for a while and whose YouTube channel of “Spicy” PowerPoint tips, tricks and hacks has racked up almost 3 million views.

In tutorial after tutorial, P-Spice shows how PowerPoint can be used for business and for fun to create incredible animation and video effects—most of which I didn’t even know were possible.

If you’re into animation, or just want to check out some fun things you, check it out here!

Below is one of my favorite tutorials. For years when clients asked if PowerPoint could create a spinning globe effect, I always said, “no.” Well…guess I was wrong!

 

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Categories: Animation, PowerPoint, Video.

Consumer Reports and Y-Axis Shenanigans

There are many data visualization sins, but the one that makes my blood boil is manipulating the Y-axis. Fox News is the master at this, so often just deleting the Y-axis entirely to invent the data story that syncs with the network’s political narratives.

While Fox News generally is creating a story that isn’t there, usually when I see Y-axis shenanigans, it is to exaggerate a legitimate story. And generally, the story is a good one to begin with that doesn’t need exaggeration.

I was not been a big fan of the Consumer Reports redesign from a graphic design perspective, but it has slowly gotten a bit better. But the really need a stronger editor (and backbone) when it comes to data visualization. Your data tells a good story to begin with—there is no need to visually lie to your readers, as they did recently with these charts showing secondary market ticket prices. Because the length of the bars indicate value, distorting them is essentially telling an untruth to your audiences. (No, $22.58 is not one quarter as much as $36…)

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Just being visually truthful doesn’t make your story less impactful. And if it does, then you need to get a better story! This would be a far more truthful design:

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Or, since it is a trend, I would probably suggest a line chart:

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Categories: Information Design, Printed Information, Showing Data, Visual Thinking.

Presenters Network 2016 Get Together

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We had another great Presenters Network Get Together this week organized and hosted by David Grupper of PointMade Animation. Saw old friends, some very old friends and met lots of new designers and presentation professionals from the New York area. And we had some great presentations from speakers.

Take a look at all the pics here!

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Categories: Presenting Live.

Using Stock Imagery Like the Pros via Presentation Xpert

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Before the internet and e-commerce sites, the world of stock photography was an intimidating and wallet-draining world of printed catalogs and rights-managed images with few suppliers— Getty Images and Corbis being the two biggest. Royalty-free imagery that could be bought outright and used in most any situation was a significant advance, although initially, it was still quite costly.

These days, there are hundreds of sources for stock photography at all price levels—even for free—so, you have few excuses for using low resolution, cheesy or outright stolen imagery.

Click here to read my whole article on Presentation Xpert…

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Categories: Design, Imagery.
visual training presentation