Thanks to Amber on the TLC design team for developing this FREE, full-featured Halloween PowerPoint template developed in PowerPoint 2016, we can all embrace the Halloween spirit!

Everyone at TLC hopes you have a fa-boo-lous Halloween!

This template is sure to put a spell on you!

Download here.

Just a quick slide from a recent project that I thought was pretty cool.

Throughout this presentation, we used a layered visual styling of photo images as the base and animated vector illustrations that interacted with the photo. Rather than list the 4-5 talking points about CO2 emissions from vehicles, we visually represented vehicles with a huge tail pipe. Then, to visually support the talking points, the CO2 icon was introduced, followed by the gasoline icon, which supported the talking point about gasoline powered engines with another vector overlay (the story there was how much better gasoline has become over the decades, in terms of CO2 emissions, but that it still creates them).

Overall, the slide design using images and illustrations allowed for a presentation that was visually creative with a unique style and a happy presenter.

-Troy @ TLC

Have a great Columbus Day weekend!

Here is a little side project by one of the TLC Creative design team. All animation is done in PowerPoint 2016, some of the art elements developed in Adobe Illustrator and then imported and animated.

Presentations that focus on in depth medical studies and analysis and are presented to a peer of like minded doctors can also be visually dynamic and professional! The TLC Creative Services Design Team develop a large number of custom templates (and does an even larger number of presentation makeovers) for medical/pharma/device industries every week. This is the PowerPoint template for HCV (Hepatitis C) research that was used recently.

We identified a color scheme, an accent graphic (hexagons), the overall message (difficult, with positive and negatives), patient population demographics and other factors that influence the visual message the template should convey. After a round of concepts, the selected visual was developed into a full featured PowerPoint template with every preset customized to assist the multiple presenters in creating presentations easily and to coordinate with all other presentations.

-Troy @ TLC

Microsoft released Zoom with a lot of great formatting options and features for linked thumbnails. Here is a list of several tips & tricks we learned working with the Zoom thumbnails.

When creating a Slide Zoom (link to a specific slide, not a section), you can drag and drop a slide from the left navigation pane onto any slide!

Thumbnails have dynamic live content. For example:

1. Create a Summary Zoom
2. Update one of the link slides (in this case, add a giant pink circle)
3. Navigation slide thumbnail is instantly updated with the new slide content (amazing!)

Any Zoom thumbnail can use a different image. Much like a video Poster Frame image, a Zoom thumbnail can be set to any external image.

1. Select a thumbnail
2. Either right-click thumbnail and select CHANGE IMAGE > CHANGE IMAGE or go to FORMAT > ZOOM OPTIONS > CHANGE IMAGE > CHANGE IMAGE
3. In the pop up dialog, select any external image and OK to change thumbnail image

If the custom image is not wanted, it is easy to return the thumbnail to using the slide image. Just right click Zoom thumbnail and select CHANGE IMAGE > RESET IMAGE or go to FORMAT > ZOOM OPTIONS > CHANGE IMAGE > RESET IMAGE.

Also, any image styling options, such as drop shadows, outline, bevel, rotate, 3D perspective, etc., can be applied to a thumbnail. Note: 3D perspective is an example of a formatting option that can be applied, but does not always provide a nice transition effect.

Remove Background of thumbnails. This is a great design feature! Using the FORMAT > ZOOM OPTIONS section > ZOOM BACKGROUND and only the content on the slide will remain a part of the thumbnail. All slide master content (background image, logos, etc.) are removed from the thumbnail.

As example, here I have added a .png image of flower pots on the slide (and the flower background is set as the background image).

Next I added a SUMMARY ZOOM, which adds a new navigation slide with thumbnail navigation images of each slide selected.

Selecting the right thumbnail and going to FORMAT > ZOOM OPTIONS section > ZOOM BACKGROUND to do an image ‘remove background’ effect.

All content that is on the master layout and/or set background image are removed from the thumbnail and what is left on the navigation slide is a .png with transparent background that has only the content actually on the slide (this is great!!).

 There are a lot of styling options and “hidden” features. Enjoy finding creative ways to develop non-linear presentations using Zoom!

-Troy @ TLC

The PowerPoint Morph transition is PowerPoint’s best new animation feature!

We have been leveraging the fantastic new transition in lots of presentation projects since its release, including using Morph for animations. Here is another example where we used Morph as the animation effect. Our client wanted to show the above three statements. The real request was to emphasize each as they were addressed. Our first step was to convert the provided bullet list into a dynamic visual; the end result was the above slide.

For the “emphasize each” request, using the Morph transition as our animation, we created a dynamic “flip” animation effect. It also was something that did not look like “PowerPoint.” Below is a video of the final animation effect:

• After the slide layout was approved, we duplicated the slide 3X.
• On the first slide, we added the animated entrance effect for the 3 circles and text.
• On the second, third and fourth slides, we simply horizontally flipped each circle. No animation on these slides. The Morph transition created the nice twirl, or flip, animation.
• Done!

– Troy @ TLC

This is a slide makeover from a recent presentation design project. For the project, we discussed the styling, end use, presenter style and content with our client. After developing a custom PowerPoint template, visual styling rules, and then a speaker support presentation based on the provided presenter script.

Not only did we learn a lot about Probiotics, but we developed slides like this that simplified 4 paragraphs of text into a clear visual message.

-Troy @ TLC

Finally, Leap Year explained (thanks to Sara and some more great Morph animation use!).
Happy Leap Year, February 29th!

-Sara @ TLC

We let the TLC Creative Presentation Design Team loose to experiment with PowerPoint 2016’s new Morph transition/animation – the results are fun, great and inspirational!

Here is our design team’s Morph ideas compiled and output as a video.

– The Design Team @ TLC

Adobe InDesign is our preferred layout application for print design projects. But it is not a widely used application in Office environments. Microsoft Word can be difficult to work with in documents that need to be flexible with content layouts. Design project requests for a “PowerPoint Document,” a PowerPoint file designed specifically for PDF or laser print output (not slide shows), continue to grow. And applying our formal print design background helps these documents stand out from “standard” Word and PowerPoint styling and be a visually “professional” print design piece.

This single sided print piece (client content removed) is an example of a PowerPoint Document design project.

• Letter size page (8.5×11″)
• Portrait orientation
• Clean, easy to read and professional print layout (content flow, smaller font sizes, alignment, etc.)
• Off-slide indicators of editable text areas end user can modify
• Customize PowerPoint template attributes to help maintain corporate branding guides (customized color scheme, default fonts, default shape attributes, etc.)

-Troy @ TLC