5 Must-See PowerPoint Tutorials for Creating Better Training
From the New York Times to the US Military, 2010 may go down as the year PowerPoint-hating went mainstream. The ongoing Death by PowerPoint debate resurfaced last week when Oracle CEO Larry Ellison delivered a keynote address featuring PowerPoint slides that had a distinctly 1987 vibe, delivered in a style that was as passionless as it was mind-numbing. Ellison’s generic PowerPoint and inept delivery ultimately inspired a brilliant post from Garr Reynolds where he referred to him as “The Darth Vader of PowerPoint.”
While PowerPoint has more than its share of outspoken haters, for many of us in the training world there’s no point debating PowerPoint’s good or evil; it simply comes with the territory. Whether you’re developing material for instructor-led training or for online, PowerPoint is the go-to development tool. Thus, it would stand to reason that most of us are pretty proficient users by now — able not only to delight in other people’s PowerPoint fails but to craft our own rich visual designs that engage and educate our audience. Yet for all our understanding of what not to do with PowerPoint, why do we still end up with training slides that look like this?
Here’s my theory: Most people understand the rules of engagement around PowerPoint but when they encounter a design challenge they can’t overcome quickly they (understandably) opt to play it safe and default to traditional, boring layouts to get the job done. Being the PowerPoint geek that I am, I’ve come up with 5 of the most common design challenges I hear from peers – ones that aggravate, confound, and stifle creativity – and I’ve addressed each one with an easy-to-follow tutorial that gives you all the tricks you need to avoid becoming the subject of the next death by PowerPoint story.
Challenge #1: I don’t know how to get my image to fill the entire screen.
Solution: Use some clever cropping to extend images.
Challenge #2: My presentation has no visual interest – it’s just one boring rectangular photo after another. Is there something else I can do to images besides drop-shadows and borders?
Solution: Use simple drawing tools to create a torn edge effect for images.
Challenge #3: I’ve got a lot of characters in my training scenario. How can I make it clear who’s who?
Solution: Play with color and gray scale combinations to highlight individual characters on the screen.
Challenge #4: I’d like to create a sense of motion to draw attention to a specific object on the screen, but built-in animation effects look cheesy.
Solution: Easily create a fluid zoom-in effect to draw your trainees into the scene.
Challenge #5: I don’t have money for cool graphics/I can’t find the right graphics.
Solution: Easily make custom graphics with PowerPoint’s simple drawing tools
What are your PowerPoint design challenges? Share them with the Mindflash community by leaving us a comment.
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I always teach my trainees not to cram too many points in the same slide. Nonetheless, I find my self quite often forced to show many points in one slide to connect one point to other points or to give an overview on the whole idea that explained by the points together. Is there exist a powerpoint technique that enables me to show all the points without loosing my standard size of fonts and spaces
Hi – and thanks for reading the blog! I’ve given some thought to your question regarding keeping multiple bullet points in a readable font size on the same page. This can be tough if your bullets are text heavy, but one thing to consider trying is to paraphrase your points down to as few words as possible on the slides. Showing minimal words on the screen is the hallmark of a skilled PowerPoint presenter and something your audience will appreciate. You can always provide a handout (even a link to a handout for later download) so your audience can have a visual of the full information and any summary points you’d like to make to tie it all together.
I hope these ideas were helpful to you and thanks again for reading!
Trina
Woow! Thanks!
Thank you very much Trina! This article was really super!
Thanks for every other wonderful article. The place else may anybody get that type of information in such an ideal manner of writing? I have a presentation next week, and I’m on the search for such info.