Most of the animations and slide transition effects currently available in PowerPoint do more damage than good to a presentation (an earlier post on the subject). The video below is guilty of some of these mistakes, but it also contains some effects that would be very useful to have in PowerPoint 2010 (preview in an earlier post):
- Very slow moving zoom
- Extreme image zooming
- Image blurring
- Zooming inside data charts
See how often I used the word “zoom” here. In the current version of PowerPoint you cannot control zooming enough: effects are blunt. Either via devices like the iPad, or via a breakthrough by software innovators like Prezi, or via improvements in Microsoft’s/Apple’s slideware, eventually we will get to advanced zooming capabilities in presentation software.
Video credit: Dan Meyer’s 2009 Annual Report from Dan Meyer on Vimeo. Found via Fubiz
Further reading: an excellent post by Garr Reynolds about slow zooming and photographer Ken Burns.