Relational Presentation Blog – Flexible PowerPoint

by Robert Lane    www.aspirecommunications.com

A design technique that works as well in visually interactive presentation as it does in painting, floral arranging, and every other form of visually artistic expression is off-center placement. Off-center arrangements of content on slides cause the eye to be pulled in different directions simultaneously, potentially leading to more interesting visual displays. That’s not to say centered, symmetrical arrangements are bad. Ideally, presentation materials should contain both kinds of placement.

In Figure 1, the bold mountain draws your gaze upward and to the left, whereas the hiker’s image draws it down and to the right. This is called creating visual tension because your eyes are drawn in two directions at the same time.

On a PowerPoint slide, using opposing diagonal corners is the most common way of creating this effect, although stacking items on either side of the slide or at the top or bottom can work as well.

Figure 2 is an illustration of how primary navigation buttons work in an interactive presentation platform—what switchboards they open. This design combines top stacking and diagonal corner tension. Arranging navigation elements on one side of slides, with content on the other (nested or topical navigation style) produces an overall off-center design as well (Figure 3).

As demonstrated in Figure 4, off-center, unbalanced designs work well for creative graphical switchboards or content illustrations. There is no reason, necessarily, why navigation elements must be in a straight line or column, especially on switchboard slides. They can be artistically placed and interwoven into designs. We also sometimes refer to these artistic styles of navigation as decorative switchboards.

Notice one more interesting fact about off-center design. Even though the slide’s design components are askew in various ways, they normally still contribute to an overall sense of balance across the slide; tension pulls in at least two directions. For example, in Figure 5 the Navigation Models label pulls left and the arrowhead pulls right.

Filed under: Design of Graphics, Design of Slides, PowerPoint on January 16th, 2010 | No Comments »

By Robert Lane           www.aspirecommunications.com

Creating decorative navigation buttons in PowerPoint 2007 is quite easy. All you have to do, really, is add a Bevel effect to a standard shape. The result looks pretty good on its own. You can do even better, though, by going a step further and adding a 3-color gradient fill to the beveled shape. That’s the approach we’ll take here. The result looks like Figure 1.

Open PowerPoint if it’s not already open. Before doing anything else, make a couple of adjustments to the standard slide. Delete the placeholder textboxes. They just get in the way. You want a completely blank slide. Then, right click the slide pane, choose Format Background, and change the background color to Black. That way the effects we create in the shape will show up a little better.

Next, add a shape to the slide pane by clicking the Insert tab on the Ribbon, clicking the Shapes button, clicking the Rounded Rectangle option in the list of available shapes (Figure 2), and finally clicking and dragging on the slide pane.

Remove the shape’s outline. We won’t need that. Do so by double-clicking the shape to assure the Drawing Tools Format tab on the Ribbon is active. Then click the Shape Outline button and select No Outline from the options.

Now, with the shape still selected, add a Bevel effect. Click the Shape Effects button, hold your cursor over the Bevel option, and then click the upper left bevel style called Circle (Figure 3). Click somewhere on the slide pane away from the shape to deselect it and observe its natural state without selection handles. See that it now has a three-dimensional appearance and already looks clickable. That’s good.

Let’s pretty it up a bit more, though, by adding a fill gradient. Click the shape again to select it. On the Drawing Tools Format tab, click the Shape Fill button. Next, hold your cursor over Gradient and click the More Gradients option at the bottom.

On the Format Shape dialog box that appears, toggle Gradient Fill. Your view probably looks something like Figure 4. Note, however, that if you’ve already assigned gradients to shapes on other occasions, PowerPoint may remember the last gradient you made and automatically assign that customized pattern to your shape here. In that case, your view may be different—but then again, that also probably means you already know how to work with gradients. If that’s true, adjust upcoming instructions accordingly to fit your situation.

Click the gray arrow next to Stop 1 in the Gradient Stops area. See that by default, three Stops exist here. A Stop represents a gradient color, along with that color’s position in the gradient spectrum. As such, right now our shape’s gradient contains three colors that fade from one to another across the shape. You can add many additional Stops if desired. In this tutorial, we’ll leave the number at three.

To create the look shown above, you need to adjust the Stops a bit. Click the Color button for Stop 1. Then click More Colors at bottom, click the Custom tab on the Colors dialogue box, and adjust the Stop 1 color to be a light pink (almost white). This action gives our button an appearance of bright glow on its upper edge.

Next, activate Stop 2 and adjust its color to be a very dark reddish purple. Before moving on to Stop 3, however, stay here and adjust Stop 2’s position. Click and drag its Stop Position slider left until the percentage at right displays as 25% instead of the initial 50%. This action has the effect of decreasing the amount of upper glow, in effect sharpening it and expanding the amount of lower purple color.

The last action is to change the Stop 3 color to be a bright reddish purple. This action gives the impression that the shape has a subtle internal glow, as though lit from within.

And there you have it, a decorative button. If desired, add a text label by simply clicking the shape to select it and typing desired text. Adjust the text color and size to compliment the shape’s look. The button is ready for a hyperlink.

Filed under: Design of Graphics, Design of Slides, Interactive on December 15th, 2009 | 1 Comment »

by Robert Lane      www.aspirecommunications.com

Figure 1 is an example of Topical-style navigation. Navigation buttons and thumbnails appear along the slide’s left side and the audience sees all these navigation elements. New relational presenters often observe this fact and ask, “Hey, is there a way I can hide those navigation components so that my viewers don’t see them?”

 

Yes you can, depending on which styles of navigation you choose. The question, though, is whether you really want to hide navigation. As a general rule, our opinion is no, you do not want to hide navigation. Here’s why.

Most people believe that a large column of navigation on the slide surely distracts audience members and therefore should be eliminated if possible. Actually, it doesn’t. People hardly notice navigation components after awhile. That’s because what attracts our brain’s attention is change and motion. Because the navigation elements change very little while the presenter moves around between slides, viewers notice the changing content at right (as they should) but quickly learn to ignore the left navigation panel. They see it, but don’t really see it at all.

Another argument for hiding navigation goes something like this, “Yeah, but those buttons take up a lot of space on the slide that I might need for content.” You know what? That’s a good thing. Giving yourself less space on the slide pane encourages simple design. By placing only one idea on each slide, in a limited space (our recommendation), you reduce unnecessary complexity and help people better understand your messages. You’ll find, in fact, that the reduced content area is still plenty large enough for almost anything you might want to show. And if you really do need the entire slide pane for a particular topic, all you have to do is jump out to an external show and then return again to the main platform when finished.

Consider, too, that being able to see navigation choices while presenting is extremely helpful to you as a speaker. Those navigation buttons give you subtle reminders about content options, as though glancing at a cheat sheet while taking a test. Audience members sometimes find navigation helpful as well and may use your own navigation buttons to request more information about a subject of interest. Some presenters even encourage such activity by making navigation elements on slides very large and easily readable.

Filed under: Design of Platforms, Design of Slides, Interactive, PowerPoint on October 30th, 2009 | No Comments »

By Robert Lane      www.aspirecommunications.com 

You really like the idea of visually interactive PowerPoint presentation. One day you decide it’s time to take the plunge. Parking yourself at a big conference table with packages of index cards in hand, you begin planning a relational platform’s organization structure, all the individual ideas that might be needed while explaining points to audiences and answering their questions. Pretty soon you realize … geesh … the number of slides needed will be massive, maybe hundreds and hundreds. How in the world will you have time to get all that content in place?

The short answer is you won’t—not this week or this month, anyway. Large interactive platforms sometimes require years to complete. That’s not a big deal, really, because you don’t have to have all that content in place right away. In fact, you can save money, time, and sanity by following a simple principle called the Illusion of Completion instead.

Make the content look like it’s really there, even though only a fraction of it actually exists initially. Doing so is easy. Simply build switchboards that represent all the future content branches in your platform. You might even go a step further to link navigation elements on those switchboards to placeholder slides so links really work when clicked. In other words, build an empty shell that functions like a completed platform, without detail on slides.

Once that shell in place, decide priorities. Which slides do you need most for upcoming performances? Get those components in place right away and leave the rest of the platform empty for now.

Look at the switchboard shown above, for example. It appears to represent a massive amount of content but how much of that material is truly there? Maybe all these links are active, or perhaps only ten, or just one. You as the viewer have no way of knowing. The switchboard, nevertheless, creates an illusion that everything is waiting and ready. Audience members naturally assume your presentation materials are complete even if 99% of them are nothing but air.

Some years back, we proposed this approach to a group of presentation professionals and they responded with self-righteous indignation. “You can’t do that! That’s deception. That’s trickery.” No, guys, on the contrary it’s called practical reality. The biggest reason why people fail to become interactive speakers is because they reach a point of overwhelm. They discover how many slides their interactive portfolio should contain and then freak out.  No one has that much time or resources right away. They throw up the white flag and surrender.

Giving materials the illusion of completion, on the other hand, and gradually filling in empty spaces over time as opportunities allow, is much more practical. It’s what smart interactive presenters do and is a key to your success.

Filed under: Design of Platforms, Design of Slides, PowerPoint on August 22nd, 2009 | 1 Comment »