Is it worth spending the time it takes to sketch out graphical ideas in advance, or is it better to get started quickly and spend the time on the version you plan to hand off? Does it make sense to spend resources storyboarding a video, or is it wiser to spend that time shooting, as soon as the story is done? In this episode my manager says it’s often not worth the time it takes to do a lot pre-production planning; but then, he’s never seen anything I’ve put together without it.

Listen to the episode
Duration: 14:32
Size: 13.33 MB

For articles about using visuals effectively and other topics, free downloads, and more information, visit https://office.com/.

https://media.libsyn.com/media/harrymiller/Viz017_PlanningStoryboarding.mp3

There’s often a conflict between conveying information quickly and conveying it effectively. How simply can you show the information without crossing over into obscurity? That line is where pictograms live. Some pictograms cross over that line and contain no information for people who haven’t learned the visual code, but are dense with information for those who have learned it. When you create visuals to communicate, which is more important – information density for the initiated, or information clarity for the first-timer?

Listen to the episode
Duration: 14:36
Size: 13.39 MB

Pictogram article at pixelresort.com:
https://pixelresort.com/blog/how-and-when-to-use-pictograms/

For articles about using visuals effectively and other topics, free downloads, and more information, visit https://office.com/.

https://media.libsyn.com/media/harrymiller/Viz016_SimplicityComplexity.mp3

The concepts behind Minimalism have been an accepted part of good technical writing and presentation style for some time, but it never hurts to hear it again. Eric Schmidt just finished a two-day writing workshop on minimalism, and he talks about the most important lessons he took away from those sessions.

Listen to the episode
Duration: 13:08
Size: 12.05 MB

For articles about using visuals effectively and other topics, free downloads, and more information, visit https://office.com/.

https://media.libsyn.com/media/harrymiller/Viz015_Minimalism.mp3

Geetesh Bajaj, PowerPoint MVP, designs and sells high-quality PowerPoint templates on his site, Ppted.com. He also provides in-depth how-to information on his other site, Indezine.com, as well as writing the Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 Complete Makeover Kit. Geetesh graciously took some time to answer a few questions from the Visual Communication and Design blog.

All images in this post are taken from  Ppted.com.

Where do you get your inspiration for the visual “look & feel” of your design?

Design always evolves. I would not be truthful if I said that I had an exact idea of any look and feel for a project. So, ‘inspiration’ in itself is a relative term that’s not fixed. I might get inspired by something and start working on it – and unconsciously, I might drift to another look and feel. In the end, inspiration is a starting point that evolves into a seemingly different end result.

I get inspired by many conventional things: photography, natural textures, historical motifs, etc. In addition, I find inspiration in children’s art, the angle at which a door hinges on to a door frame, how you can place some handmade paper over another and create design, or even plain doodling.

The difficult part is to transfer that sort of inspiration to my design staff, so I try to make the difficult into the easy by breaking my thoughts into small concepts. I just give them a brief idea and then allow them all the creative freedom that I can. I’ve never been disappointed with that approach.

Some people have stated that the principles of graphic design are “Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, and Proximity.” What principles do you observe when designing your templates?

Graphic design in its pure form has no principles, just guidelines. I’ve found that no principle works all the time. However, these tricks work pretty well:

· Look at a design, and keep looking for a while

· Play with it, and

· Allow the natural choices of evolving that design to progress.

Every design has something hidden within itself – like a macrocosm within the microcosm. You just have to discover that for your design.

How do you decide whether a specific graphic design layout is appropriate for your content?

There’s very little in this world that may not work for all content, primarily because you are going to  evolve while you work. Watercolor artists do not have that freedom because evolution for them may translate into another painting; with the digital canvas that we use in PowerPoint, evolution is the cure for everything.

There’s nothing that cannot be made better through constant evolution – and after all, a new graphic design layout is a mere click away! Yet we suffer from bad design all the time, and that happens because people are scared to experiment or they are pressed for time.

Of course, both experimentation and logic have their place in deciding what type of layout you want to use for a particular slide. Luckily, those options can be easily narrowed down by first creating a proper outline. Once that is discovered, it’s easier to implement the guidelines that you mentioned rather than the other way around. If you start with the guidelines, you have all rules, no soul – if you end with them, they can actually improve your design.

Obviously, one of the best ways to learn how to do a new (or frequently forgotten) task is to just do it. Office Labs, a group here at Microsoft, has embraced this concept with their "Ribbon Hero" game. Ribbon Hero is a free, downloadable add-in for PowerPoint, Word, and Excel. Each one features a series of challenges that ask the "player" to complete basic Office tasks in order to score points. You can learn more about Ribbon Hero on the Ribbon Hero download page, at the Office Labs website.

Or, if you prefer, you can watch Doug talk about it in this video:

Office Casual: How to play the game of Office Ribbon Hero

Download Ribbon Hero 

So, what do you think, technical communicators? Would you define this as "documentation"? Do you think that this approach will help people learn how to use software? Let's hear your thoughts.

Eric S.

This line from the blog post strikes a chord for me:

Another great thing: this product has historically had a bit of an image problem about being hard to use, and Stacey’s video made the product look easy. I laughed, I oohed and aahed at the graphics. I was enjoying the music and the smooth mousework, and I swear to God, I pictured myself clicking around competently in the product experiencing the same feelings I had while watching the video.

And there was this gem, as well:

So I have hope for screencasts. Not to replace our hundreds of procedures, but to do something new that we are missing entirely right now. And, I hope we are going to think about what that is and do it right. Because so far, my impression is that screencasts may be like newsletters–if the first one I open is packed with good content, I’ll probably open the next one, too. If not, I probably won’t.

To my mind, the blogger has set some important criteria to evaluate the screencasts-as-documentation:

1. Does the video take a complex concept/procedure and make it “look” easy-to-do?
2. Is the video interesting enough that it could be serialized AND people would want to watch the next episode?

What criteria do you use to evaluate screencasts? Please add your comments to this post!

- Eric S.

Geetesh Bajaj, PowerPoint MVP, designs and sells high-quality PowerPoint templates on his Internet site, Ppted.com. He also provides in-depth how-to information on his other site, Indezine.com, as well as writing the Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 Complete Makeover Kit. Geetesh graciously took some time to answer a few questions from the Visual Communication and Design blog.

All images in this post are taken from Ppted.com.

When you begin creating a PowerPoint presentation, do you decide upon the graphic design and visual appeal first, or do you organize the content and information first?

One of the first steps to creating a presentation is applying a template (see my  previous post about “discovering” the right template). There’s a common factor that binds the template and the presentation. First, they are both part of a unified scheme. Then, they both have to work towards the same goal of creating simplicity and balance of design.

For most presentations, I assume that such a template is already in place. If there’s no such template available, I might have an idea about the design at the back of my head – something I would call inspiration.

In a presentation, the most significant part is content, and I don’t start looking at the visual parts consciously until I have the outline of the presentation in place. By ‘outline’, I don’t just mean the content in PowerPoint’s outline pane, but rather three related concepts:

· Actual text content, pruned and edited

· A story that evolves, and visual content that supports the story

· The flow from slide to slide – no assumptions and no flashbacks!

Would you agree with the statement that “animation distracts the audience from a presentation”? When would (or wouldn’t) you use animation?

To a certain extent, I would agree but I would not use that as an irrevocable mantra – a better statement would be:

“Animation that does not have a purpose is distraction. Animation that emphasizes the important is enhancement.”

What is your favorite, new, graphic design feature in PowerPoint 2010?

I love the new Artistic Effects in the Picture Tools – these are so amazing!

Visual efficiency means creating graphical elements and placing them to take advantage of the way the eye and brain work. We based our discussion around a presentation given by Ryan Coleman (linked below), who discusses four things that the eye and brain see first in any space: color, shape/orientation, size/proximity, and motion.

We also talked about how these elements help or hurt video demonstrations – are they leading the viewer to where you want them to look, or are the most interesting visuals somewhere else, pulling the viewer’s eyes away from what you’re showing?

Listen to the episode
Duration: 18:22
Size: 16.8 MB

Ryan Coleman’s presentation at Ignite Toronto:

https://vizthink.com/blog/2010/01/13/designing-for-visual-efficiency-an-ignite-talk/

https://media.libsyn.com/media/harrymiller/Viz014_VisualEfficiency.mp3

https://www.youtube.com/user/OfficeOnlineVideos 

For articles about using visuals effectively and other topics, free downloads, and more information, visit https://office.com/. ]]> https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/harrymiller/interview-designing-powerpoint-templates-and-images Mon, 11 Jan 2010 06:00:00 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/harrymiller/2010/01/11/interview-designing-powerpoint-templates-and-images/

Geetesh Bajaj, PowerPoint MVP, designs and sells high-quality PowerPoint templates on his Internet site, Ppted.com. He also provides in-depth how-to information on his other site, Indezine.com, as well as writing the Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 Complete Makeover Kit. Geetesh graciously took some time to answer a few questions from the Visual Communication and Design blog.

All images in this post are taken from Ppted.com.

When you begin creating a template, do you decide upon the graphic design and visual appeal first, or do you organize the content and information first? 

For a PowerPoint template, I look at three areas:

1. Explore the type of slides that a client or prospective user normally creates, or use a generic set of slides if there is no client involved

2. Play with and adapt to the slide layouts based on the exploration in the preceding step, and

3. Create a typical presentation that is more representative of the content researched.

Then I explore the design factor by looking at it in terms of a grid, colors, and different content types. This will ultimately lead me to discovering the right template. The important part here is “discover.”

Your templates on Ppted.com are so detailed and rich – how do you envision that people use them?

Ppted has detailed and rich templates simply because I love color and texture! Unfortunately, no one else creates templates of that kind – and in a strange way, that’s very fortunate for us.

We also work hard to retain the same saturation and contrast values in a design. Every Ppted design has a background that works because you can read all the text and see any foreground elements.

We test every design to ensure that they work with four accepted color harmonies:

· Monochromatic

· Analogous

· Split Contemporary

· Double Contemporary

In addition, we provide all designs as wide screen variations, along with coordinated transparent graphics – and we test them too. The resultant designs look brilliant when projected as well as looking attractive and understated at the same time.

I notice that several of your templates feature static images in the background that fade gradually from left to right (example). What intrigues you about this effect?

I like this effect because it allows us to create designs that use color and texture effectively. If there’s some foreground content like a detailed table or chart, then the presentation designer can actually use the faded area of the slide rather than the saturated parts.

In addition, each design includes variations with large white areas and more variations with semi-transparent, solid box areas so that you can use them in all sorts of slides and layouts.