Happy New Year! Everyone at TLC Creative Services is excited about 2016! Today is the 10 year anniversary of The PowerPoint Blog (Jan. 1, 2006 was the first post)!!

Our New Year’s Resolution has been in the works for a few months with the addition of new team members and a lot of planning for the blog and a few other presentation community projects this year. For The PowerPoint Blog, I have come up with 12 presentation  topics – one for each month of 2016, we have filled in the blog post titles for over 1/2 the 2016 posts, and we have over 30 posts ready to go! So, for 2016, look forward to PowerPoint samples, tips & tricks and tutorials every Monday-Wednesday-Friday!

Today’s photos are not of the TLC office (which does have some great holiday decorations too!), but of our Christmas lights at home – which is now a 10 year tradition.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

– Troy @ TLC

A few weeks ago, at The Presentation Summit in New Orleans, I was happily a part of the audience listening to Nigel Holmes give the opening General Session talk. Nigel is British, funny (in a British way), memorable (especially the vibrant blue rimmed glasses) and amazingly observant. In talking with Nigel later, he made it very clear that he is not claiming the below pie chart graphic as his, but I am giving him all the credit for weaving it into his talk since it was the first time I have seen it.

One of the TLC Creative designers recreated this amazing 3D perspective pie chart (from a photo I took of Nigel’s presentation) and it still makes me smile!

Feel free to download the TLC Creative version of this slide Here.

– Troy @ TLC

I received a very exciting email Friday (standing outside the Astor New Orleans with a number of other PowerPoint MVPs) confirming Microsoft has renewed the MVP Award for contributions in PowerPoint technical communities through 2016! This will be my 15th year as an MVP for PowerPoint and I am truly excited about the award, AND about being connected to the Microsoft development team over the next year with so many great things lined up to happen in MS Office and PowerPoint!

– Troy @ TLC

In just over a month from now the (unofficial) annual conference for the presentation industry is going to be happening in New Orleans. I look forward to seeing you there!

Website: www.betterpresenting.com/summit

 Who: 200 attendees, 20 presenters, 14 PPT MVPs, “PowerPoint” people from Microsoft, and representatives from many industry companies

When: September 27-30

Where: The Astor Crowne Plaza, New Orleans, LA

Discount Code: Add NOLA15 to the Client Code filed for a $75 registration discount (there were only 20ish seats left when I talked with the conference organizer earlier this week)

What is Troy Doing There:

• I attended the very first Presentation Summit, and have been a presenter at every one since (minus 1 – and that was New Orleans!)
• My first priority is spending time with my fellow PowerPoint MVPs.
• My second priority is putting on 2 fantastic sessions: (1) The Great PowerPoint vs. Keynote Clickoff. (2) Alignment & Balance – Designing for your audience with intention. The schedule for this year’s conference looks great, and there are going to be a lot of difficult choices – I am just saying, these two sessions will be fantastic!
• My third priority is enjoying time talking with anyone about anything! (okay – related to computers, presentation design, running a design studio, and my favorite restaurants in New Orleans)
• And my beautiful and talented wife and business partner, Lori, will be there too!

– Troy @ TLC

It is small and for local businesses. But not that small of an area, TLC Creative Services is in a small city of 100k, bordered by cities of another 200k. I know there are not a lot of graphic design companies in our area, but we are very proud to receive one of the BEST OF 2015 awards!

– Troy @ TLC

PowerPoint is designed for visual presentation design and projection. I clearly remember several meetings and discussions with Microsoft as they worked on PowerPoint 2007 about improving the print capabilities of PowerPoint – the laser printer, handout, PDF capabilities. Fast forward to Office 365 and PowerPoint 2013 and I am seeing a significant number of project requests and forum questions on how to use PowerPoint to design print documents. For this full month, ThePowerPointBlog is focusing all posts on using PowerPoint for print document design.

Before we dive in with showing examples of PowerPoint for Print projects TLC Creative has done or providing tutorials on how to setup PowerPoint for print, let me establish a few technical terms and perspective:

• Quick Print and Laser Print: This is printing a document on a black/white or color laser printer, it can be sitting on your desk or a large system at a Kinkos. They all have the same traits, digital printing and not capable of printing to the edge of the paper.
• Offset Printing: This is “real” printing. Print design files are output to separated film and each plate is applied as individual passes of ink. From the printer, the paper needs to go to finish cutting to have a ready-to-use print document. Note: Offset printing can have the print image go to the edge of the paper.
• Resolution: Web and presentation images are 72DPI – or low resolution (and this is a big generalization for the sake of an easy conversation). Print (eg. offset press) is 300DPI – or high resolution.
• Vector Graphics: Images, or text, that are based on geometric shapes and mathematical equations (see that high school geometry class was important after all!). Note: Vector graphics can be enlarged to any size without quality loss.
• Raster Graphics: Images that are created from dots or pixels. Note: The image is at a set size and enlarging lowers the visual quality.
• Bleed, Printer vs. Reader spreads, CMYK vs. RGB, and many other print industry terms need to be understood by those using PowerPoint to create print documents.

So, why am I qualified to lead a discussion on PowerPoint-for-Print? Because before digital printers had quality output, and before PowerPoint (Flash, Director, and Harvard Graphics) made it easy enough for virtually anyone to create layouts, I worked in the print industry turning design files into separated film plates for the printing press operators. I am not saying I am old, but as a youngster I was lucky enough to enter the design industry as the digital revolution was in process. I experienced the true printing process and learned the classics of visual design – all great things that carry over into the wonderful world of PowerPoint presentations.

Because now, everyone has a computer – tablet – and smartphone that has PowerPoint (thanks Microsoft for making Office available everywhere!), everyone can now use PowerPoint to design more than slides. In addition, the ease of sourcing images, video, custom fonts, design accent graphics and low cost printing all have created an environment in just the past few years for PowerPoint to become the default print design application – if only it did not have so many limitations!

Next post is “PowerPoint vs. Word vs. InDesign – which should I use?“

– Troy @ TLC

The TLC Creative office is empty for a few days, and our team hopes everyone has some time away to recharge and bring fresh creativity to your projects!

And our Christmas dinner with White Elephant gift exchange in 40 seconds!

– Troy @ TLC

In November, Lori and I were happy to support one of our great clients at their Barcelona, Spain and Lisbon, Portugal international sales meetings. TLC developed the event PowerPoint templates, coordinated all presenter support needs, worked with the local in-country AV and assisted the meeting planning group – plus, we enjoyed a few days of amazing site seeing after each event.

Troy and crew in Barcelona, Lori in Lisbon, Video wall, solid stage set, being tourists in Sintra.

– Troy @ TLC

This is a slide from a recent project that I think is a good demonstration of seamlessly integrating PowerPoint content and graphics with photos. We developed from a script, so no design was done before our design team created the presentation – but I can easily see something like this being the “standard” PowerPoint slide:

Here is the TLC Creative Services slide for the presentation:

Here is the development process for the complete slide message:

1. Review script, understand message, outline needed slide content to support message.

2. Research images, or develop image. For this slide we used this stock image:

3. Develop a cloud graphic in PowerPoint to animate and carry the message.

4. Use a combination of PowerPoint shapes and custom shapes that will become our PowerPoint cloud:

5. Turn all of the shapes into a single cloud using the MERGE SHAPES tool:

5. Adjust the color and fill/outline options:

6. Add the text (direct in the cloud shape):

7. Final step is to add an animated entrance effect:

Download the final slide here: CloudData

– Troy @ TLC

Our annual pumpkin carving party was a lot of fun this year with everyone showing great creativity!

– Troy @ TLC