5 Tips on Getting PowerPoint to Sing!

Many of you spend a lot of time working in PowerPoint. It’s become the top visual communications tool in business and is used to shape perception every day. But PowerPoint is only the instrument, you’re the master musician. Any great musician can tell you that it takes practice, practice, practice to master an instrument.

When Microsoft approached us to create an instructional template for PowerPoint 2010, we were thrilled. To actually be in PowerPoint, an application that we have a long history with, and to be able to share some principles of good presentation design with the world was a wonderful opportunity that we simply couldn’t pass up.

Just like how a master musician loves a difficult piece of music to challenge him, we wanted to give some of you masters out there a piece to deconstruct that’ll be a nice challenge—everything from Photoshop-looking graphics to Flash-like animations—all within PowerPoint.

First task to build this file was to take PowerPoint for a spin so that we could learn all its new features and tools and push those as we built the file. We were impressed with many of the new features because it gave us a new visual lexicon we could use to tell a story.

The foundation of the script came from the Manifesto: The Five Theses of the Power of a Presentation from our book slide:ology which are:

1) Treat Your Audience as King: They didn’t come to your presentation to see you. They came to find out what you can do for them. Make it clear what they are to do.

2) Spread Ideas and Move people: Communicate your ideas with strong visual grammar to engage all their senses and they will adopt the ideas as their own.

3) Help The Audience See What You’re Saying: Guide your audience through ideas in a way that helps, not hinders their comprehension. Appeal not only to their verbal senses, but to their visual senses as well.

4) Practice design, Not Decoration: Don’t just make pretty talking point. Instead, display information in a way that makes complex information clear.

5) Cultivate Healthy Relationships: Display information in the best way possible for comprehension rather than using slides as a crutch.

After we wove the rules into a narrative script with a strong storyline we storyboarded visuals to communicate the story in a clear, engaging way. Because presentations are usually digitally slick, we wanted to push the app to see if we could achieve a hand-crafted look for the piece which is a popular design trend right now.

We hand-sketched text and had employees dress in outfits from the 1950s. Using features within PowerPoint 2010 (film grain, color temperature, contrast) we transformed those images into retro-looking, “cut out” images. To bring the file to life, we created all of the animations within PowerPoint, using PowerPoint 2010s new animation features such as the bounce end (to give animation a natural movement) and the Animation Painter (a feature that we have been wanting for a long time). The new, more fluid transitions were also key to helping us complete the smooth journey through the features. We also wanted to take advantage of the new video features and embedded video with ease to help us reinforce our message.

We ask you to view the file that was posted as if it is a music score. It’s your turn now to study how it was done and hopefully use the features to make your next presentation SING!

—Nancy Duarte, Principal, Duarte Design, Inc.