Powerpoint
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- atomica0
You're doing the company a horrible injustice doing power point presentation material for them. I just got back from a seminar from a guy whos kinda leading the way in the visual presentation of information, edward tufte... check out
http://www.edwardtufte.com and read his cognative learning and power point essays. Its amazing, and really, power point is awful, I can recite todays lecture, but i'd rather you research.
- STB0
I am very familiar with Mr. Tufte's work. I have all his books (literally) and I agree with most of his points.
However, you must live in a dream world if you assume that I can tell a billion dollar, international client that it's an injustice that I take their paycheck to do relatively easy work. Injustice is gay-bashing or racism. Creating Powerpoint templates is never injustice unless they promote gay-bashing or racism.
Here is a good question though for Atomica and Edward Tufte. How should a person with absolutely no design skill and barely any computer skill put together a presentation to sell million dollar sprockets? Often having to put together their presentation in less than two hours? Also this presentation might need to be translated into 10 different languages at some point including non-western text?
I am not asking this question rhetorically. I really want to know. Because if there is a better way, I'd like to do so because Powerpoint is cheesy, but in my experience, it's no-experience-user friendly (if the template and guidelines are done right).
- atomica0
I understand where you're coming from, but if you read enough you would have picked up his presentation tips. This is what he said works best at the seminar:
1. Use hand outs because: their tangible, you can fit way more info on a 11x17 bifold then on a 100 power point slides (he considers this high resolution versus low resolution 640x480 versus a 11x17 front and back at 300dpi+). It gives the person something to take home, something to think about, and something to doodle on if thats their case, regardless its there and its handy (and in the case of 50+ slides no one's going to remember the first handful anyhow, if its on paper its always there). Oh and add 8.5x11 insert pages if you have to, it can be amazingly worthwhile to the user. He handed out a nice one, that couldn't have taken more than a couple hours to make and was heavily informative, had some room for me to take notes, etc.
2. use conversation, it works better than six lines of six word sentences that work as pitches.
3. Use power point to display only images that reinforce your presentation - not your presentation facts themselves. (i think this is a great idea personally)
4. Use humor if you have to, it helps relate to people - clip art and chartoons do not.
5. Be a teacher, not a sales person. Power point gets you into the sales pitch attitude automatically - when your giving facts ..... that an awful thing. No ones going to trust it or put effort into it.
That was the main jist of it... I'm not saying change your billion dollar corporation completely, get the cognitive thinking on power point booklet, or present a similar idea to the above and with the least bit of intelligence they'll at least see some of that as being intelligent. NASA was is a billion dollar corporation and as part of power point was some of the fault of the Columbia crash last year and tufte proved that and they included it as a key part of the reports while figuring out what went wrong.
- PuFFi0
Have you tried the presentation software from
It works really well and it even exports to flash...
It's free...
http://www.openoffice.org
- STB0
We do have sell sheets that our sales force uses in presentations, but often when you are discussing sales information you need them custom to the client (can't make those on an airplane), often you don't want them to have printed materials they can have leaked to competitors and it's not practical.
If you plan on presenting at some conference where you have time to create your presentation, then fine.
However, in the real world sales people have meetings on a turn of the dime.
"Be a teacher, not a sales person." What if you are a sales person?
I hear your points and appreciate Edward Tufte's writings and respect his opinion but he is a professor who writes in an ivory tower. The examples he chooses are perfect for his arguments and they are often in a bubble.
- STB0
I don't understand how saving your presentation as a Flash file solves anything? If anything our sales force wouldn't be able to edit an existing SWF.
I guess if you had a presentation over the web. You can use Macromedia Breeze to do that too.
- atomica0
I got what your saying STB, I'm just saying people learn in a more concrete manner when they're not being sold upon. Sales tend to equal empty handed statements.... I'm not trying to change your mind or anything though....
- tshongi0
STB
I've just finished 2 jobs from it. I also hate it. I need to check this Keynote thing out. It seems to be a lot better (esp handling type). Anyone know if keynote is avaialbe for MS?.. Because it's no pnt to do it in Keynote and PC users don't have Keynote..
STB.. also check if they want to present 16x9.
- ********0
I love some of these retorts. Designers are just as stupid as clients. They want power point. They didn't ask for flash. Telling them HOW to write the content is not the designers job. You KNOW they want bullet points and crap clip-art, so take the job, give it to them, make them happy, and take the fucking check.
No need to make a mountain out of it.
- STB0
I agree moth. I want to be a responsible designer though and was looking for best practices and what other people are doing with Powerpoint. I know many people have used it, but feel that they will lose some worthless design cred by sharing their experiences with PPT.
I think that we also have many young folk on this site who have absolutely no idea that if you want to become a designer not everyone gets to make flash presentations everyday. Sometimes to feed your family you design for CLIENTS who pay you MONEY to do what THEY want. Sometimes in this job market you take work that you don't to do thus describing the term work.
- STB0
Oh and Atomica. A question...
1. Would you turn down a client who is going to pay you good money to make a PPT template for them because it's an injustice?
I think you missed my point. Companies are often not teaching other clients stuff. They are SELLING stuff. They often don't want the client to learn everything. They sell like commercials on TV... bullet point, bullet point, pain word, pain word, here we are to help. Powerpoint seems perfect for this?