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.

Powerpoint Projects

By next Tuesday (1/31):
Read the two Powerpoint chapters - look for things you don't know how to do, and figure them out. The book walks you through step by step. See the blog entry below with the chapter synopses for a concept list.

Done in class:(Due on Thursday 2/2 by end of class)
PPT 134, #2

1. Add some hyperlinks – previous/next slide, camping website, KOA logo
2. Hand in 2 slides per sheet of paper, printed in the lab. Make sure you have a title slide with your name and section number on it!
   

PPT 136, #3

1. Done using outline as per the textbook - except find your own clip art that is appropriate for the subject..
2. Print out 2 slides per sheet - but make sure you have a title slide with your name and section number on it.
   
3. THEN make changes for better design (fewer slides, build effect, better graphics)
4. Hand in 2 slides per page, plus a digital copy. Filename YOURNAME_SECTION#_PPT136.ppt

Outside of class:

Get the handout, either from me or from Blackhawk (when it gets it's brain unscrambled, probably inside the folder ppt or powerpoint).

Presentations will be given on February 7 and 9. NO LATE ASSIGNMENTS WILL BE ACCEPTED.

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
   

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

Welcome!

This is the blog for Tom Rule's CS125 class at Mercer university - Spring 2006.

As I type this I am not exactly how this tool will be used - but I do intend for it to be useful!

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