GETTING STREAM
5 Tips to Make Your PowerPoint Great
Posted by Kimberly Fisher on Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Kimberly A. Fisher is the Marketing Art Director she makes our website, white papers and presentations look good. She's starting what we hope will be the first of a series about wrangling PowerPoint like you're a Graphic Designer, even if you draw like a five-year-old.
PowerPointers from a Graphic Designer
You've read plenty of tips (this is a good one) for creating the most captivating presentations. Less words, more pictures, repeat key take-a-ways at both the beginning and the end. Content is King. Yeah, yeah… you got that. Here I’ll be focusing on 5 tips and tools that can make you a PowerPoint King or Queen. Learn my tips to keep you looking as professional and polished as possible.
1) Tool: Format Picture / Size Right click on your image and select Format Picture. Select Size from the side menu.
2) Scale: Avoid Pixilation
The height and width is displayed here in percentages. 100% equals the original size of the image and therefore 100% and lower is the best quality to use at (unless you started with a pixelated image of course). Anything over 100% will start to pixilate the image. These percentages should always be identical (i.g. Height 90%, Width 90%).
3) Lock Aspect Ratio: Stop Clowning Around
See the lock aspect ratio button, turn it on. Then, keep it on! Do you hate the bloated and distorted image of yourself in a carnival mirror? When this option is not checked it allows you to stretch the image and distort it by changing the height, but not the width in proportion. The good news? If you didn't listen to my first sentence and turned Lock Aspect Ratio off, you can easily correct this by changing the Scale percentages to match. (Or, you know, just leaving the Lock Aspect Ratio button checked!)
4) Size and Rotate: Precision Control
This tool gives you more precision than if you scale the image by pulling on its corner by eye (always pull from the corner, otherwise you have a stretching issue again). Your height and width is shown here in inches. This is super helpful when you need several images to be the exact same width, for example creating a clean looking column. Note that if you forgot to Lock Aspect Ratio it will let you type in any combination of height and width (stretching). If you change the width and it automatically adjusts the height, this is a GOOD sign. Need to change one (height or width), but not the other? Time to use the crop tool!
5) Tool: Crop Select the image, then, under Picture Tools, on the Format tab, in the Size group, click Crop.
Retrain/Frame Your Brain Sometimes you want an image to fit in a certain space or want to line up several different sized images, or you need a rectangle to become a square. You're tempted to stretch the image and be done with it.
DON'T!
Use the crop tool to achieve the right shape for your need.
Read this article by Microsoft to learn how you can: • Crop to a specific shape • Crop to a common aspect ratio • Crop to fit or fill a shape
Next Up: Alignment: Tidy up! Written by Kimberly A. Fisher, Marketing Art Director, ePrize