by Geetesh Bajaj, June 9, 2015

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Rob's presentation had this picture concept and so did Sam's - and so do countless other slides. What's this picture concept that populates so many slides? Why is it so popular? And more importantly - why is it so over-used? First of all, let's admit that the reason why a picture concept gets clichéd is because it is good to start with - but then it's too good for its own existence. Rampant over-use means that the emotions that this picture concept evoked do not work anymore - and that's exactly what happened with the teamwork picture that showed many, many hands placed together. And now, just because some people over-used the concept, you have to find, create, and use newer visual concepts to cater to that same emotion!

Learn why teamwork pictures such as hands placed together are so clichéd, and what you can do about it

Dr. Andrew Abela is the Dean of the School of Business & Economics at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. In addition to co-authoring The Encyclopedia of Slide Layouts, with Paul Radich, he has written Advanced Presentations by Design, currently in its second edition, The Presentation: A Story About Successful Communication with Very Few Slides, and co-edited A Catechism for Business, with Dr. Joe Capizzi. His academic research has been published in the Journal of Marketing, the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, the Journal of Business Ethics, and several other journals. He provides consulting and training to major global corporations, including JPMorganChase and Microsoft. In this conversation, Andrew discusses his new book, The Encyclopedia of Slide Layouts.

Read the conversation here

Paul J. Radich has worked with Dr. Abela on the development and delivery of the Extreme Presentation workshop since its inception in 2005. He has served on the Ethics Committee of the American Marketing Association, and is Assistant Professor and Marketing Area Head in the School of Business and Economics at The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. His areas of focus include consumer behavior, marketing strategy, and international marketing. He provides consulting and education on effective communication of complex information, for major organizations like JPMorgan Chase, Visa, Volkswagen, and the US White House Executive Councils. In this conversation, Paul discusses his new book, The Encyclopedia of Slide Layouts.

Read the conversation here

Duplicate, Rename, and Edit Slide Layouts

All slides within PowerPoint are based on one of the available Slide Layouts (we call these just layouts for the rest of this tutorial). These layouts can be chosen when you add a new slide or you can even change the layout of your existing slides -- both these options are accessible from the Home tab of the Ribbon. While these available layouts seem to cover most types of slides, you may sometimes want to create a new layout based on your individual requirements.

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Add New Slide Layouts

With the various Slide Layouts in PowerPoint you can create good looking slides. For example, you can use the ready-made layouts available that contain pictures or charts or you could use a separate layout for the opening slide. While duplicating and editing Slide Layouts is a great way to make small changes, it's not the same as creating a Slide Layout from scratch. As an analogy, duplicating and editing a Slide Layout is more like using a coloring book to fill color between the lines of pre-drawn art -- but creating your Slide Layout from scratch is more like starting with a blank sheet of paper and drawing your art before you start coloring between the lines. You can decide which of these approaches works best for you.

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Inserting New Placeholders in Slide Layouts

In PowerPoint a placeholder is a boilerplate container that you can use to fill in with some sort of content. When you launch PowerPoint, you will see those distinctive boxes that invite you to add some content -- haven't you noticed the "Click to add title" suggestions? All these boxes are placeholders -- when selected, these boxes have a dotted border around them. Each of the default layouts comprises a collection of various placeholders -- if none of the available layouts work for you, you can create your own layout with custom placeholders.

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Working With Picture Slide Layouts

Slide Layouts are a very useful feature because they let you use a boilerplate arrangement of placeholders repeatedly, resulting in slides that are laid out consistently. And yes, you can also create your own custom Slide Layouts. While very few users create their own custom Slide Layouts, even fewer will create a custom Slide Layout with pictures! That's regrettable since Picture Slide Layouts can make your slides look so unique. In this tutorial, we will show you how easy it is to create your own Picture Slide Layout in PowerPoint 2013.

Insert Flash Movies Using the Developer Tab

PowerPoint 2013 allows you to insert video (and also online videos) files within your presentation -- one of the file formats that you can use for these video options is Flash SWF. You can also use the Developer tab of the Ribbon to insert Flash SWF movies. First of all, make the Developer tab visible as it is not visible by default. You also need to have the updated version of Adobe's Shockwave Flash ActiveX control -- to make sure, you have the current version installed, go to this site using Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Installing Office 2016 for Mac Preview

Microsoft has made available the Office 2016 for Mac Preview, which includes newest versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other programs - anyone can install this free Preview version, which will continue to work until the official release of the product, which is estimated to be available in the second half of 2015. To learn more, follow these steps -- or even read these steps as a walk-through.

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