I had a client that recently asked me to review their PowerPoint presentation. They were having a challenge trying to get animations to work right.
What was actually happening was they were confusing transitions with animations.
Visual Design Trend – Monochrome for a Modern Look
For a more modern visual design, consider adding monochrome images to your courses. These images are stark, sometimes overexposed (meaning lots of white and a loss of details), and typically black and white.
They don’t have to be just black and white though. Sometimes a pop of color is intriguing. If you have the capability, you can add the pop of color yourself and have it match a primary color of your course.
Monochrome visual design doesn’t always have to be black and white either. It really just means a single color. This could be a cool blue color. Sometimes, it is also sepia (tan/yellow). Other times, it might be shades of brown or green.
PowerPoint Skills – Grouping Tips
Do you find that you tend to have a lot of items on your screen and it is a pain trying to move them around in a way that they are synchronized with each other? How many times have you had to move one item, then another to line it up, and then another, etc. only to later add an element to the screen and have to move everything again?
You have several options:
- You can select each element individually each time – colossal waste of time – especially if your design has a lot of elements.
- You can perform a drag-select movement, in which you click on the screen and drag around all the elements you want to select. This can be inefficient because you sometimes will select unexpected items and then have to deselect them or you may not grab everything you thought you were grabbing. Then, you have to hold SHIFT and try to add the missing elements or press CTRL to remove unwanted elements. It is even more complex when items are on multiple layers.
- You can group the elements and click once to select all the items and move them together.
Without grouping your screen items, the selection process can be a true pain and time waster if you are designing screens.
This is where grouping comes in.
PowerPoint Design – Transparency – What is it and how can you use it?
One of the challenges of being proficient with a software tool is that you forget that many of the things you take for granted, others are not familiar with and it is totally a new way of thinking. Today, I had a situation occur that was just this topic.
A group of our classroom instructors have been working on a series of what I would term “base PowerPoint” files. Essentially, they lay out concepts, ideas, and content. Then, it is my role on this project to clean them up and put them into Adobe Captivate, where I would add audio and interaction.