I love PowerPoint! It is by far my favorite Office program. It is a “Power” program that if used with creativity and purpose can produce enjoyable and informative slideshows. I believe because I have such an affinity for PowerPoint I bring a nice perspective to client ideas when it comes to putting a presentation together.
I have had such an interesting PowerPoint journey that I want to share some ideas that I have come to rely on when producing a client presentation. This series of posts will focus on how you can utilize PowerPoint to achieve the slides you envision.
1. Think Outside the Box
If there’s one thing that can be a determining factor as to the level of creativity you can bring to PowerPoint it’s to Think Outside the Box!
I want to offer two examples of this idea.
1. Templates serve a great purpose for many MS Office users. Most users are simply trying to make a presentation with few slides and no frills, bells or whistles. However, if you want to really “Wow” your audience you need to move beyond the barriers of the template.
Starting with a template can be a good jumping-off point. That should be all it is though – a place to begin. The mind is very capable of creating a presentation with a personal touch that can scream “This was MY idea. I thought of this design, brought it to life and was able to move the audience with its message!” This can be a very rewarding experience.
2. You can do a great many things with PowerPoint - import graphs, charts, images, etc. However, if you have a graph or chart that your client faxes to you in handwritten format, you must rely on your “outside the box” creativity to produce that graph/chart.
I once worked for a company that relied heavily on PowerPoint presentations to convey their message to clients, co-workers, vendors, government agencies and others. When I arrived for my job interview it consisted entirely of creating 5 PPT slides from scratch. They consisted of text, clipart, graphs, charts, symbols and more. There weren’t any additional documents from which to gather the data. So I quickly went to work making my graphs from rectangles, lines, arrows, text boxes and more.
One slide needed a red to green shaded bar to show a gradual progression towards an end. I could not, for the life of me, find that bar in the clipart. I was having a hard time creating this. I finally decided to create the bar on my own. I made three rectangles and filled them with a two-color shade that made a gradual red to green fade.
Finishing, I completed the 5 slides, printed them and gave them to the interviewer. She was very happy with the results. I personally wasn’t so impressed because they could have been much better if I wasn’t pressed for time. Suffice it to say, I got the job and ended up making countless PPT’s from hand-drawings that my bosses would fax and mail to me.
When I left the job I discovered why my boss was so impressed with the slides I created. The possible replacements for my position could not even get through 3 slides. As I watched each of them working on the 5 slides I noticed how automated their movements were. That’s the thing with Microsoft – all the MS programs are so similar and the toolbars so uniform that you can practically perform each function the same way you would in the other office programs - Word, Excel, Publisher, etc.
This integration can be a great thing, but it can also stifle that urge to Think Outside the Box. You get caught in the cycle of moving through the toolbars and processes that seem natural but in the end you can’t make a chart or graph without having the data to import. You can’t create an image that isn’t located in the Clipart Gallery.
You have to be able to build from the ground up any element you want on a PPT slide. This can be done if you Think Outside the Box.
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