I work with PowerPoint on a daily basis and I am very honored to be a Microsoft PowerPoint MVP. We have a talented team of presentation designers at TLC Creative Services and ThePowerPointBlog is our area to highlight PowerPoint tips, tricks, examples and tutorials. Enjoy! Troy Chollar
Hotel Room Art Out of Balance with the Room…
Have you ever looked at a slide that’s clearly been repurposed and feels unbalanced? Modifying existing slides for new content is a great shortcut and time saver, but step back and look at the slide. Is the layout balanced? Are elements aligned to each other? Does the slide look “correct”?
I had the immediate feeling of looking at a repurposed slide when I stepped into my hotel room (this is really a hotel room I recently stayed in – but no brands or cities named). Instead of noticing all the nice things this hotel is offering, my mind was distracted (like an audience member being distracted by a poorly designed slide):
- Why is the art not centered on the wall?
- Did the room originally have just one bedside table on the right so the bed would be centered under the art when the furniture was centered on the wall?
- Was this just a bad art installation, or was the art here first and a new bed installed later?
- If the art was here first, what was the furniture like before that would make an off-center art piece look good?
- Wait…is there a problem with the wall that it cannot support the art if mounted in the center? Am I safe sleeping under this unstable art!!?
Moral – don’t create slides that let your audience get distracted with formatting questions. And don’t question the hotel room furniture and art choices, you are there for a short stay and will soon forget it (unless you use a photo of it for a blog post and then can be reminded of how odd it was for years-and-years!).
Troy @ TLC