Powerpoint: Color and Design issues to consider

If you are color illiterate like me, you need all the help you can get when choosing colors - and it IS important which colors you use in a presentation. Design of the slides are also important, as we will see in class. Below are links to some information, how-tos, and discussion on using Powerpoint.


START WITH THESE
Good overall design advice - http://ecglink.com/library/ps/powerpoint.html
Something else to read before you get started - http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2005/12/the_102030_rule.html


COLOR

1. The Color Wheel - http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HA010120721033.aspx
2. Effect of colors in a presentation - www.medianet-ny.com/BigScreen.pdf
3. Choosing colors for your presentation slides -http://www.communicateusingtechnology.com/articles/choosing_colors_for_slides.htm


4. The effect of Color - http://www.indezine.com/products/powerpoint/books/htdepowerpoint.html

DESIGN ISSUES

1. Precision Layout tools - http://www.presentations.com/presentations/creation/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1871209
2. Don't use bullet points! - http://sooper.org/misc/ppt/

3. Best quote: PowerPoint has affected business, substituting real thought with animations and bullet points.

GRAPHICS STUFF

1. Special Effects with Pictures - http://www.presentationpictures.com/powerpoint-wow.htm
2. More graphics tricks - http://www.infocomm.org/index.cfm?oID=4C6EE11F-30FA-4FA0-83F6CA611123E124
3. Misc Tips - especially check out the one about compressing graphics - http://www.microsoft.com/office/previous/xp/tips/powerpoint.asp

Excellent general presenting resource
....especially the columns where a powerpoint design specialist takes a company's presentation and redoes it - think Extreme Makeover for powerpoint. - www.presentations.com
Presentation Zen is also an excellent resource - http://www.presentationzen.com/


....and finally, reasons why you should care about what you learn in English class:

Suddenly, business executives, for example, are handling their own correspondence. There is no secretary or administrative assistant reviewing the content, context, spelling, grammar and punctuation. And the results are positively embarrassing. It numbs the mind to realize how many senior executives can't spell or don't have a clue what it means to have the verb and the subject in agreement. ("What the hell! Let 'em negotiate!")

Interestingly enough, I detect a couple of trends here. Clearly, more and more of our business and personal communications will move via e-mail or its next generation equivalent. But, if you read the work of today's high school students, you have to fear for the language. They can barely communicate with themselves, much less anyone above the age of 20.

Now, the upside to all of this is that someone like me who writes for a living is never going to be out of work. The downside is that, sooner or later, the writers are all going to go to that great writers' block in the sky. And then where will the rest of you be?

from Academic Leadership - http://www.academicleadership.org/volume1/issue4/articles/skipboyer.html

Additional quotes from this article:

PowerPoint® is right up there on my list of the World's Most Dangerous Electrically Powered Tools, a notch or so below the power saw and just above desktop publishing.

Any tool, when used properly, can benefit the user. Power saws and drills just beat their manual counterparts all to hell, although I think the jury is still out on power toothbrushes. It's when tools are used improperly, usually by well-intentioned amateurs, that they can wreak havoc.

Electronic communications, publishing and graphics programs put the most sophisticated communications tools in the history of the species in our hands. As a professional communicator who clearly remembers hot type and carbon paper, it's a joy to have them. However (and this is the scary part), those same tools are also in the hands of your church secretary and the entertainment chairman of the local Rotary club.

If you doubt the dangers here, take a good look at your next church bulletin or club newsletter. Three different column widths, eight different type fonts, six different type sizes and nine unrelated bits of artwork. And that's just on page one.

One of the distinctive marks of a professional is restraint. Just because you have 200 fonts available doesn't mean you have to use all of them. A professional communicator understands that PowerPoint® graphics are called "speech support" for a reason. Use them with restraint.

Where the web is heading - and info on Powerpoint design

As always, the web is constantly changing as people come up with new ideas and implem,ent them. One of the biggest things lately is on-line collaboration - a bunch of people pooling their collective knowledge to produce something useful. Wikipedia is an example - an online encyclopedia where anyone can contribute (but how do you ensure accuracy?)

This trend will affect how you use the web - and especially how you research!

Also below are links to information about readibility on-screen, and info about font choices.

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Line Length affects readability
http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/usabilitynews/42/text_length.htm

Font Choices for Web (applies to Powerpoint as well!)
http://www.site-reference.com/articles/Website-Development/The-Fine-Art-of-Font-Choices.html

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What is Web 2.0?
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html?page=1

Web 2.0 - fantasy or fact?
http://www.site-reference.com/articles/Website-Development/Web-2-0-Fad-or-the-Future.html
http://www.site-reference.com/articles/Search-Engines/Following-Yahoo-to-a-Wealth-of-Traffic.html


Delicious site
http://del.icio.us/

Answers @ Yahoo
http://answers.yahoo.com/

folksonomy: refers to the collaborative but unsophisticated way in which information is being categorized on the web. Instead of using a centralized form of classification, users are encouraged to assign freely chosen keywords (called tags) to pieces of information or data, a process known as tagging. Examples of web services that use tagging include those designed to allow users to publish and share photographs, personal libraries, bookmarks, social software generally, and most blog software, which permits authors to assign tags to each entry.

Kilo, Mega, Giga...then what?

One byte = 1 character of text.

You can see that this is rather clunky when dealing with larger sizes of data (imagine talking about that 10 page research paper as being 1,643,254 bytes long ....... and forget about talking audio or video!)

So we turn to the metric system for help.

1024 bytes is called a KILObyte.
1024 KILObytes is a MEGAbyte.

So here's the list:

Kilo (10**3)
Mega (10**9)
Giga (10**12)
Tera (10**15)
Peta (10**18)
Exa (10**21)
Zetta (10**24)
Yotta (10**27)

http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci499008,00.html for more info.

So, in practical terms, what does this mean?

1 Kilobyte is about a single page of double-spaced typed text, .006 seconds of CD stereo audio (uncompressed), and .000286 seconds of high definition uncompressed video.
1 Megabyte would be roughly 1000 pages of text, 5.9 seconds of audio, and a third of a second of video.
1 Gigabyte would be 1.7 hours of audio and 5 minutes of video.
1 Terabyte would be 2.4 months of audio and 3.6 days of video.
1 Petabyte would be 202.4 years of audio and almost 10 years of video.
1 Exabyte would be 2071 centuries of audio and 10 centuries of video.

Powerpoint Chapter - concept list

I thought it would be helpful to list the concepts the 2 Powerpoint Chapters deal witrh. I'll be adding significantly to them as we go through them.

1. GUI overview
2. Design Template
3. Title Slide
4. Text
5. Bullet Lists
6. Views
7. Printing
8. Outline Tab
9. Change Slide Layout
10. Slip Art
11. Header / Footer on printout
12. Animation
13. Email - limits
14. Posting to Web
15. Ftp

Additional concepts we'll deal with (this list is NOT exhaustive!)

1. The Master slide
2. Design issues
3. Color issues
4. Buttons and navigation
5. Hyperlinks
6. Drawing tools
7. Charts
   

"Google School"

From a newsletter by Dawn at smalldog.com

Since Google appears to be taking over the world, or at least the virtual

world, we should all brush up on how to take advantage Google's
capabilities.

Just about everyone knows that searching for small dog electronics versus
"small dog electronics" is different, and some of us even know that you can
use Google to define a word (just enter define: unknownword ) but did you
know that you can search just one web site or search for a file type or
search for movie reviews, stock prices, and phonebooks?

The Google Guide is a fabulous resource for beginners and advanced users
alike. Use the Quick Reference page for a instant look at all the advanced
operators at your disposal. Here are just a few examples:

Enter link: To find linked pages (i.e., show pages that point to the URL)

Example:
link:www.smalldog.com
(Find pages that link to Small Dog's website.)

Enter bphonebook: To show business phonebook listings

Example
bphonebook:Hearst Castle San Simeon CA
(Search for the Hearst Castle phone numbers.)

To restrict a search within Froogle Use store: To find Froogle products from
the specified store

Example: quickertek store:smalldog
(Find Quickertek products at Small Dog. You may need to find the store name first.)

http://www.googleguide.com
http://www.googleguide.com/advanced_operators_reference.html

+-------------+

Another great way to use Googleis to see a map of an area code using Google
Maps. Just type Area Code 802 and you'll see that your first choice is to
see a map of the area code. It's helpful if you don't recognize an area
code and want to see where it is.

+-------------+

There is a feature called Q & A where you enter a question and the result
is a direct answer. For example, "What is the population of Japan?" . There's
a bunch of different types of questions to ask, such as "when is galileo's
birthday" or "where was alexander the great born."

Why I don't teach buttons

I teach processes - so you can figure out what buttons to push!.

Here is an example why - Windows Vista is due out fairly soon (perhaps within the year), and it looks COMPLETELY different. You will still be doing the same types of things on the machine, but how you do them will change.

Take a look at this graphic comparing Windows XP and Windows Vista:

(from http://www.bentuser.com/image.aspx?ID=3c1c466e-0cfc-4018-a295-f16ab889145a)




...and if you're interested at all in where the sounds came from, here is a movie of a recording sessions where they are creating the sounds to be used with Vista.
http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=151853

Netiquette (aka Email Ettiquette)

Why bother? Because email is a communication medium - if no one is listening becuase you are so doggone aggravating to deal with, why should you waste your time? On the other hand, if you do have something to say worth saying, it's worth the effort to make sure the information is packaged in such a way that people will hear it!

A company needs to implement etiquette rules for the following three reasons:

Professionalism: by using proper email language your company will convey a professional image.
Efficiency: emails that get to the point are much more effective than poorly worded emails.
Protection from liability: employee awareness of email risks will protect your company from costly law suits.

--From emailreplies.com

The legal liability issue is very real, especially for people in legal, financial, and health-related industries.



Some online resources:

http://www.library.yale.edu/training/netiquette/addition.html - Yale University

http://www.learnthenet.com/english/html/65mailet.htm - LearnTheNet.com

http://careerplanning.about.com/od/communication/a/email_etiquette.htm - the Career Planning Guide at About.com

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/pw/p_emailett.html - Purdue