Re-post: creating McKinsey-style water fall charts in PowerPoint
Waterfall charts can X-ray a complicated story. Here is an explanation about the technicalities of creating one in PowerPoint, here is an example of an application.
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Category Presentation design
Re-post: merging presentations without mixing up formats
When Frankensteining a deck (i.e., stitching a new presentation together from old slides), there is nothing more annoying then slide formats that go crazy when pasting in slides. Here is a trick to avoid this.
Re-post: editing overlapping objects with the selection pane
One of the best-kept secrets of PowerPoint is the selection pane, that allows you to remove overlapping objects from a slide temporarily to make it easier to edit layers. Details here in a previous post.
Re-post: PowerPoint text in a circle
PowerPoint makes it possible to morph text in a circle, read the details here in this earlier post.
Holiday posting schedule
Over the next few weeks I will be spending more time with my family, and less online (similar to what I guess many of my readers will do). Posting frequency will drop, and I will be re-posting some earlier post that I think could be useful for readers that have only joined this community recently.
The word "management"
These little annoyances in presentation design, the word “management” is one of them. You need it very often, it is relatively long, and it does not look good/readable when hyphenated. How many slides got a 2nd best design because of this word…
Every slide starts with a sketch
Painters first make a sketch before starting the final painting. Presentation designers should do the same. I have a big pile of old print outs that is my unlimited source of scrap paper. An important slide can take 5-10 page-filling rough sketches before turning to the PowerPoint editing screen.
I always carry one of these beautiful notebooks (affiliate link) with me to capture an idea that pops up in my head. Yes, a notebook and not an application such as Evernote on my iPhone because the idea is most of the time a sketch or a scribble. Hard to do in digital format.
The end of my most productive/creative days are always marked with a full paper trash can next to my desk.
The painting is Gauguin’s night cafe, info about him and Van Gogh painting at this location here and here.
The lone column
A column chart with just one lone column is not a column chart. Column chart need to compare things, show a trend over time.
Quotes to dramatize a number
The site number quotes is a tool with a healthy dose of humor: it helps you “dramatize” a number, simply enter it and the site returns a long list of quotes. Maybe the exact quote is not what you can use in a “serious” presentation, but it might just open up a part of your creative brain that you did not yet access. Thank you Steven Duncan.
Chart concept - painted billboard
This vintage-style ad found on Ads of the World can easily be replicated in PowerPoint. A white box, semi-transparent with a bit of soft edges and a nice font against an image of a brick wall and you’re done.
