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Pressing ALT ENTER in an Excel cell creates a soft page break, pushing the text down a line without “closing” the cell edit. You can use it to control line breaks in axis lables.
The other solution is to omit automated axis labels all together and put in your own standard PowerPoint text boxes under the bars in the chart.
I am continuing to post some “lighter” material during this holiday week here in Israel. Gary Vaynerchuk shares my passion for (great) wine. Here is an entertaining 2 minute video encouraging you to go off and do great things. Watch how he builds his point up and pauses before he gives his recommendation how to stand out in the noise of social media. [Spoiler alert]. Writing “do great stuff” on a PowerPoint slide would not have created the same impact as this video.
I am just reading this accurate blog post on Apollo Ideas: break up bullet point slides into multiple pages that focus on one idea each. Many of my clients object to this technique. “That’s too many slides! I only have 25 minutes!” They are choosing the wrong metric; number of slides, kilos of printout, presentation file size, it does not matter. Time is the only relevant factor. When you have 25 minutes to present, you bring slide material that will not exceed 25 minutes. That could mean: 50 slides, 750 gram of handouts, 5 paper flip charts, or a 70MB file.
I just finished reading the book “The Power Presenter” by Jerry Weissman, a public speaking coach.
My main interest is in graphical slide design, so it is a bit unusual for me to be reviewing a book that is solely about delivery of speeches and presentations. Initially I found it a bit hard to get into the story of the book, but as I finished more and more chapters the entire plot of the book became clearer and by the time I read the last page I found that I learnt some real valuable lessons that will affect every presentation I will give in the future. The central objective of the book is to get rid of a presenter’s adrenaline rush when presenting: the instinctive debate of the body whether to fight or flight a stressful situation. Rather than prescribing a number of dogmatic “presentation rules”, Jerry suggests way to create a natural way to becoming a more confident speaker.
Central in his book is a concept called “ERA”:
Less is more. Resist the temptation to overdo slides. Like putting too much bass and treble in your HiFi system. Like a rich chocolate dessert. Like an oaked Chardonnay. Nice on first “attack”, but then it starts to overpower you.
It is a holiday here in Israel, people are relaxing on a beautiful spring day. A bit of humor: artists commenting on when they consider their art work finished.
Via Wooster Collective, a street art blog that is worth following. Things (language, images) sometimes get a little bit more rough over there than you will find here, but hey, it’s art and there are some interesting visuals being discussed. (See a previous street art post on this blog)
It is hard to get the magnitude of a huge number across on a slide. A $700bn bailout,how much is that? Photographer Chris Jordan takes a different approach. Repetitive patterns of miniaturized objects that form a bigger picture. Images have a political message, many of them try to put current “consumerism” into perspective.
The image below is inspired by Seurat’s “un dimanche après-midi à l’Île de la Grande Jatte”, and constructed from 106,000 softdrink cans.
Check out more of his images here. Via Village of Joy.
The basic PowerPoint shapes and textures can be used to re-create realistic looking board games. Here is a concept I used for a client that needed to show how its potential customers are being hindered to move around their IT infrastructure freely.
A while ago I discussed making translucent balls. Here is a similar trick for boxes that does not use the old PowerPoint shape with a simple cavalier perspective.
Sometimes you need to emphasize a very IMPORTANT !!! word in your slide (how to do underline in Blogger?).
Don’t use all the tools you can use. In dense text, use italic, in PowerPoint slides make it bold, or change the color of the word. People will get it.
Another ad found on Ads of the World: Samsung wide-angle CCTV.
Very good Photoshop work. Still, the resulting image is not esthetically pleasing. My personal rule: never let an ugly chart or image enter my PowerPoint presentation, ever.