PowerPoint Ninja/Chapter 3

From KMWiki

Contents 1 Things you need to know: PowerPoint philosophy 2 The zen of the master slide 3 Objects are placed on the page in layers 4 Objects have a range of attributes 5 Core knowledge: default objects are hideous and slide scaled

Things you need to know: PowerPoint philosophy

Once you have embraced the empowering beliefs of PowerPoint ninjas, and understood PowerPoint’s few limitations, the next step on the journey is knowledge about the philosophy, structure and language of PowerPoint. There are only five things you need to know about PowerPoint philosophy:

1. the zen of the master slide
2. the two modes of working: slide and slide sorter
3. objects are placed on the page in layers
4. all objects have attributes
5. default objects are hideous and slide scaled

The zen of the master slide

PowerPoint is a slide creation tool, and one of the issues when preparing a slide presentation is to have each slide look structurally and visually similar. In other words, to have background graphics and logos always appear in the same place, to have headlines appear in the same place etc. Because each slide is essentially a piece of white canvass, if you are careless, it is easily possible to have headlines shift around location that is visually distracting and frankly unprofessional. Now, there are two ways to have background objects and headlines appear in the same places on each slide.

Method 1 - Manual placement which is prone to error…

The first way to approach the problem is the way most PowerPoint novices attempt. If they need a logo to appear at the bottom of every page, they manually copy the logo to every slide in their presentation, and try to position it so it appears in the same location on each slide.

Usually, however, they get it slightly different each time, with the result that as slides move from one to the next the background objects appear to jump around on the screen when it should remain in a fixed location. If you printed the pages out, as you turned the pages the repeated objects would be in visually different places on each page.

Method 2 - The Master Slide is the template…

The second way is to take advantage of the solution to this problem that was specifically created for you by the software development team building PowerPoint.

Slide 3.1: Actual PowerPoint slide. Screenshots can be placed on a page and highlighted with clear lines. Notice how the text is all aligned – these are in five separate text boxes.

The software team knew that you would want to have some consistent elements from slide to slide. They knew that you might want to have background objects, a logo, or some other static text (like “Confidential”) appear on every slide. They also knew that you would want to have standard locations and fonts for texts to serve particular purposes. In other words, even though the headline text would be different on each page, the software developers knew you would want the location, font size and color for headlines to remain the same from page to page.

To provide this flexibility, the software development team created what is called the Slide Master. The Slide Master is like a template of a slide. Whatever graphic you put on the template will automatically appear on every slide in your document. Whatever static text you put on the template (like a company name) will automatically appear on every slide, in the exact same location.

The slide master is the answer to “how do I make all my slides look the same?”.

The slide master enables you to address several very important things:

• Place static graphics and text: As mentioned above, if you place static graphics or text on the slide master they will appear in the same location in the same way, on every slide.
• Place date, time and page number boxes: The default slide master comes with special boxes for time, date, and page numbers to be placed on slides. This is the only way to get automatic page numbering of your presentation. Unlike Word, there is no ability to control the first page number, or to restart numbering in sections etc. All you get is automatic numbering starting at page one, and the option whether or not to have the number appear on the first page.
• Placeholders for content text: The final two elements contained in the slide master are two placeholders for content text. The first one, which appears at the top of the page, is called the Master title. The second one, the large box in the middle of the screen, is called the Master text styles. Whatever fonts, or text styling you apply to these boxes will automatically be inherited by every headline and bullet list that you use in your presentation. Typically, a print ninja will use the headline box for a page headline, and will use the second text box for a short (3-4 line) text box that stretches across the page under the headline.

The software developers also knew that there might be occasions where you might want to depart from the norm. So they provided the ability, on a page by page basis, to turn off the background images and other texts that would otherwise automatically show through from the master to the slide.

In addition to the master slide, there is also a title master. This template is used to control the layout of the title page of the document, in the same was as the slide master is used to control the layout of the slides. Every presentation has one slide master and one title master. Starting in PowerPoint 2003, Microsoft has introduced the concept of multiple slide masters which will operate the same way.

Slide 3.2: Actual PowerPoint slide. The slide sorter view is one of two views you need to be familiar with in PowerPoint.

The two modes of working: slide and slide sorter

When using PowerPoint there are two principal modes (or views) that you work in. These are called slide view and slide sorter view:

• in slide view, one slide is displayed on the screen at a time. You can easily change the degree of zoom on the slide (ie to see more of less of the slide on your screen at one time), however you only see one slide at a time to work on.
• in slide sorter view, you see a representation of each of the slides like a collection of slides photography ordered in rows and columns on a table. This view is extremely convenient when you are quickly moving around a presentation to find the right slide to work on, or to move slides from one location to another in your document. Click and drag a slide to its new location and all of the other slides move and adjust. When you want to create a new slide that is similar to an existing slide, it is very easy in this mode to click the slide and copy and paste a new version to edit.

You need to be familiar with these two modes of interacting with your document.

Objects are placed on the page in layers

In PowerPoint there are a range of objects that you can place on your page. Those objects are:

• text boxes
• drawing objects (boxes, circles, lines, arrows)
• autoshape objects (special drawing shapes like arrows and flowchart symbols that resize as you make them larger)
• graphic objects (pictures)
• clipart
• graphs
• organizational charts
• tables

Objects are placed on your page in layers. To understand layers, imagine you have a deck of playing cards that you are placing on a piece of paper. When a card is placed on the top of another card already on the paper then part of the card beneath is obscured. PowerPoint objects behave in the same way. If you place an object on the top of another object then the object beneath is obscured. The lowest layer is called the back. The top layer is called the front.

PowerPoint provides a range of tools to manage your objects in layers, by sending a selected object to the front layer, or to the back, or to move it forward or back one at a time.

Slide 3.3: Actual PowerPoint slide. Even when text objects are placed on top of other objects (like a picture), unless the text box has a white fill then the picture below will still show through.

Selecting objects which are not on the front layer can sometimes be tricky – because you cannot click on them without clicking on the object which is on top of it. To edit object on the back layer (like to change text), sometimes it is necessary to first bring them to the front, then edit them, and then send them to the back.

Objects have a range of attributes

Each of the objects you can place on a PowerPoint page have a range of settings, which are called attributes, or properties. By setting the properties for an object, you control its appearance.

For example, for each simple text box that appears in your document, there is a wide array of attributes that you can control, including:

Settings for.. Settings available

• The text box itself Border style (line around the box)
• Fill style (color and shading)
• vertical anchor point for text within the text box (top, middle, bottom)
• Internal margins (distance between the edge of the box and the text)
• Text typed in the text box
  • Color
  • Font
  • Font size (in points)
  • Bold, italic, underline etc

• Paragraphs in the text box
  • Line spacing
  • Space before a paragraph (in points)
  • Space after a paragraph (in points)
  • Alignment (left, right, center, justified)
  • Tab settings (left, right, centred and decimal)

In order to have a professional looking document it is necessary to ensure that these settings are consistent throughout the presentation in a way that makes sense for the structure and headings of your document. Otherwise, some pages will have different line spacing, fonts, and alignments for the same type of text (ie the body copy of your document)

Significantly, it is not possible to globally control these settings throughout a presentation – you need to make sure that every text box that should look the same in your document has the same settings throughout the presentation. How to achieve this is in Part II. As discussed later, it is important to establish standards for these settings at the outset of creating the document to avoid subsequent confusion and rework.

Core knowledge: default objects are hideous and slide scaled

The final item that you need to know about PowerPoint philosophy is PowerPoint defaults produce ugly things. When objects like charts and tables are created using the buttons in PowerPoint ugly things are created, which use huge fonts that are designed for screen projection. For example, when you press the chart button on the toolbar in PowerPoint to create a new chart in your presentation, the chart that is created is appallingly colored, in three dimensions, and with huge text. When you need to create a chart in PowerPoint you will be modifying these appalling objects to much better communicating objects. In fact, my recommendation is to create a range of charts that look the way you want them to, and then cut and paste one of those when you want to create a new chart – in other words, avoid using the wizards as much as possible. It is easier to change the data than change all of the settings for the chart.

Slide 3.4: Actual PowerPoint slide. The same text can have a very different appearance depending upon the settings for the text box in which it is placed.

Slide 3.5: Actual PowerPoint slide. The default graph format is not usable in print work without significant rework. You will be building a collection of properly design chart objects to copy and reuse rather than use the wizard in PowerPoint.