Next up in this series of recaps from my weekly curated articles, posts, and resources is this collection for designing slides, PowerPoint and presenting.
Top curated items from 2017:
- 2017 Curated Workplace Learning Roundup
- 2017 Curated Slide Design, PowerPoint & Presenting Roundup
- 2017 Curated Design Roundup
You can keep up with these and other similar things by subscribing to my newsletter – daily or weekly – it’s your call.
Quick Way to Rescue Bad Slides
The most common pitfall when designing presentations is putting too much text on the slides. If you ever have to “fix” slides like this you should know how to convert them into nice visual slides in
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/fastest-way-rehab-boring-slides-mike-taylor
Presentation Tips
Grab a copy of this handy one-page guide to creating better presentations by Tomas Bay.
https://www.coachbay.com/tools
Pslides
If you ever need some design help for applying those presentation tips, one place that could be helpful is Pslides. Pslides is a newish site for sourcing slide designs including a few good free ones.
Re-Enable EPS Files in PowerPoint
In a recent update, Microsoft disabled PowerPoint’s ability to edit EPS files due to a security risk. If you create your own EPS files or trust the sources you get them from you can grab this free PowerPoint add-in that will let you continue editing EPS files as you did before.
http://youpresent.co.uk/free-stuff/free-graphics-filter-add-in-to-enable-eps-and-more/
PowerPoint Presentation Translator
Microsoft now has a PowerPoint add-in that adds real-time captions to a live presentation and automatically translates them to a wide variety of languages, using the power of machine learning. As you speak, the Microsoft Translator live feature, displays subtitles directly on your PowerPoint slides in any one of more than 60 supported languages. Up to 500 audience members in the room can follow along with the presentation in their own language, including the speaker’s language, on their phone, tablet or computer. This is also a great option for audiences who are deaf or hard of hearing. You can try it yourself if you’re running PowerPoint 2013 or 2016 on Windows.
https://translator.microsoft.com/help/presentation-translator/
Noun Project now for MS Office
The Noun Project now has an add-in for PowerPoint that lets you use their icons on your slides without having to do the download/insert dance. You’ll get a limited set of basic icons for free or for $40/year you’ll get access to over a million. Pair this with the Pexels PowerPoint add-in and there will be no stopping you!
https://thenounproject.com/for-office/
Explainer
This post by Alexander Salas tells us that if you know PowerPoint, you can quickly learn how to make explainer videos. He also tells you why you should be using these tools and shares a list of options for getting started.
https://stylelearn.com/explainer-video-apps-learning/
Not Just for Slides: Using PowerPoint for Graphics Design
PowerPoint can handle a lot more than just slides. This year I used PowerPoint to design everything from workbooks and job aids to door hangers and even t-shirts.
https://mike-taylor.org/2017/07/27/using-powerpoint-for-graphic-design/
Real Content for Your Designs
Sometimes Lorem Ipsum just doesn’t cut it. There are times when you’re designing before you have the actual content that you need for the final version. If that involves any kind of data, you’ll love this site that generates “real” data for you to work with. Whatever you need from names and addresses to ID numbers and much, much more you’ll find it here.
A couple of other similar options worth checking out include:
Mockaroo: This one lets you generate up to 1000 rows of realistic data. Just choose the type of data you want and download your data.
Generate Data: Similar to Mockaroo, this one lets you pick the type of data and how many records you want to download.
Quick & Easy Software Demos
If you ever need to do any “how-to” training involving software, you’ll definitely want to know this trick for creating quick and easy software demonstrations. All it takes is a couple of standard screenshots, a mouse cursor and some creative animation.
Check out how easy this is to do and download my demo file.
Advanced Eyedropper Tip + 29 More Expert PowerPoint Hacks
Bryan Jones pulled together tips from 29 expert PowerPoint pros and I added one more to make it a nice round number. Check out these 30 tips to level up your slide building game. Watch the video and don’t forget to grab the ebook too!
https://mike-taylor.org/2017/08/16/advanced-eyedropper-tip-29-more-expert-powerpoint-hacks/
Access 40 million Free Images Via the New Haiku Deck #Powerpoint Addin
Who doesn’t like free images? This new add-in from Haiku Deck can save you a lot of time when you need great looking images for your projects. Now you can search 40 million images without ever leaving your workflow in PowerPoint. They even give you all the text you need to make the photo credit easy.
If you like this idea of accessing free photos from directly inside PowerPoint, you might also want to check out these other ones too (Pexels, PickIt, & Shutterstock).
Converting Keynote to PowerPoint
If you ever want to pull an Apple Keynote presentation over into PowerPoint you might be surprised just how easy it is. See one quick and easy way to convert Keynote to PowerPoint.
https://mike-taylor.org/2016/07/08/converting-keynote-to-powerpoint/
Latest Annoying PowerPoint Survey Results
While we’re talking surveys, Dave Paradi just published his results about the most annoying things people do with PowerPoint. Not surprisingly, the top offenders are too much text and information overload.
http://www.thinkoutsidetheslide.com/free-resources/latest-annoying-powerpoint-survey-results/
How To Avoid Creating Annoying PowerPoints
Nobody wants to be the one creating bad slides that annoy everyone right? After all, PowerPoint isn’t the problem, it’s the people creating these monstrosities who are at fault. Fortunately, these are super easy fixes and here are a few tips that will help you stay off the annoying presenters list:
- Fastest Way to Rehab Boring Slides
- How Handouts Make You a Better Presenter
- Want to rock your next presentation? Don’t build slides until you’ve done these two critical steps
And if you still have any aversion towards PowerPoint here are two alternatives that are worth checking out.
Slide Magic
Jan Schultink (@janschultink) has created an online presentation app that includes a library of his favorite slide templates that makes it almost impossible to create annoying slides. Check out a non-annoying example here.
https://www.slidemagic.com/presentation-design-app
Beautiful Slides
Beautiful.ai is a new online tool helps you with the rules of great design so you can build visually appealing slides quickly. Take a peek at this beautiful example.
Data Viz Project
What do you do when you’ve got a big pile of data and need a way to display it? If you didn’t have an immediate response to that question, you’ll be glad to know about the Data Viz Project. The Data Viz project is a collection of over 150 data visualizations to help you find the right format for displaying your data and give a little inspiration along the way.
Think of it as a “Wikipedia For Data Visualizations”
Presentation and Slide Design Resources
Virtually everyone needs to build slides at some point. If you want to make the ones you build better, you should definitely tap into this big curated collection that I’ve assembled over on Zeef. From learning resources and tutorials to slide templates and graphic design resources you’ll find anything you need. The best part is you can follow the page and get notified when new items are added or even suggest your own things you think should be part of the collection.
https://presentations.zeef.com/tmiket
TalkTime: A Free Presentation Time Management Add-in for PowerPoint
If you are someone who speaks or facilitates training of any kind, you’ll want to check out this nifty time management enhancement for PowerPoint. TalkTime is a free and simple add-in from Nolan Haims (@NolanHaims) and Jamie Garroch (@YOUpresentUK ) that adds a small set of tools to the transitions tab. TalkTime helps you keep track of how much time each slide and/or section takes to deliver and my favorite feature is that it enables me to print slides by section without needing to manually select them all. Check it out!
http://presentyourstory.com/talktime-free-presentation-time-management-add-powerpoint/http://presentyourstory.com/talktime-free-presentation-time-management-add-powerpoint/
Hypersay
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=mG0o6Xmp0Jc
Whenever I speak or facilitate workshops, etc I’m a big proponent of involving the audience as much as possible. Currently, I’m using a combination of PollEverywhere for audience interaction and TalkBook for delivering handouts, contact information and other relevant information. But I’m always on the lookout for new ways of doing that and I recently discovered Hypersay, a new option that takes an interesting approach.
Here’s how it works:
- Upload your slides to your free Hypersay account.
- Add interactive elements (they call them ‘atoms’) to any or all of your slides. ( Quizzes, Questions, Text (supports links and markdown), YouTube or Vimeo Video)
- Connect your audience via a link or access code.
- During your session, participants can ask questions and take private notes.
- When you’re done participants get a feedback form and you’ll get a session report that includes things like the number of participants and the number of interactions with answers submitted, etc.
Check it out at http://hypersay.com and if you try it, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Presentation & E-learning Starter Kit
As I recently told someone, I may not know much, but I know enough to borrow from the best. That’s exactly what I did to assemble this Starter Kit. If you do any speaking, presenting or slide-based course building these resources will go a long way towards helping you create a killer project.
This starter kit is a collection of my favorite tools and resouces that help with audience analysis, organizing your message, finding the right visual voice and the design assets you need for building it.
https://mike-taylor.org/2017/12/07/presentation-e-learning-starter-kit/
Top Finds of 2017 [podcast]
In the latest edition of the Mindset Digital (@mindsetdigital) podcast, Pete Brown (@petebrownsays) asked for my top 3 finds of 2017. Of course, I couldn’t limit it to just 3 – nor to just 2017. We touched on TalkBook.co, HyperSay, Canva, TalkTime, Ribbet, Zeef, and Descript
https://soundcloud.com/mindset-digital/ep-29-mike-taylors-top-three-finds-of-2017
https://mindsetdigital.com/podcast-mike-taylors-top-finds-2017/
Mike Taylor 
I know a Presentation Design Agency from India. It is a team of expert designers, They are doing well in their work. I have made a presentation from them last year, It was great. You can add that one.
http://graphitales.com
You are good and well doing. keep it up!
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