New episode available on The Presentation Podcast
As a presenter-trainer-host, what makes for a good experience for attendees to want to listen and learn something? We leave aside non-educational reasons for attending events and focus on what people want to learn and get out of training presentations. Being presentation designers and trainers, we admittedly wander into the PowerPoint and stage craft of presenting – and it is a great conversation! Listen here.
Template Design – and New Microsoft Fonts
I am working a PowerPoint template project (yes, this is the real art, for a real template – and yes, I have removed logos and product indicators – and yes, PowerPoint design can be fun!).
What I want to highlight in this post is this awesome new Microsoft hand drawn style font, Dreaming Outloud Pro. I actually do not know when it was officially added, but one of our designers found it and added to the template concept and I love it!
Troy @ TLC
Help! Template Placeholder Text Not Displaying
This is a continuation from the last post, about PowerPoint Placeholders – the master layout preset text and media placeholders that show up as a dotted outline on slides. And I included an example of a media placeholder with instructional placeholder text.
I received an email saying only part of the descriptive placeholder text was displaying. There is a reason, and we need to do a bit of a text formatting hack to make the above placeholder look like this on inserted slides.
It is typography “hard returns” vs “soft returns”. Placeholders only display the 1st paragraph. Additional paragraphs are there, and seen on the Master Slide, but only the 1st paragraph is seen on inserted slides.
For quick reference:
- A “Hard Return” is a line break that starts a new paragraph. In typography, the icon for a hard return is:
- A “Soft Return” is a line break without starting a new paragraph. In typography, the icon for a soft return is:
With PowerPoint placeholders, if the text uses hard returns for each line:
At the slide level, only the first paragraph is going to display
The text formatting hack is to use soft returns to create line breaks, but keep all of the text within the 1st paragraph.
Now PowerPoint sees all of the text, even thou it looks like 3 line breaks, it is 1 paragraph and on slides everyone sees all of the helpful placeholder text!
Troy @ TLC
Template Placeholder Text – Customize it!
I am working on a fairly robust PowerPoint template design, and one of the template build steps has become a good conversation with the client – the Placeholder Text.
Placeholder text is the “description” text in slide placeholders. Placeholders are visually distinguished by having a dotted outline (vs. solid outline). The dotted outline indicates it will not display when presented or printed.
The great thing is, the placeholder text can be updated on each layout. As example, the default “Click to Add Title” can be made more descriptive to lead the team into what content is expected in that text box, on that layout. I updated the title slide text placeholders here to literally instruct anyone using the template that the title is a SHORT set of words – not a full sentence.
The Master Slide, and each Slide Layout have placeholders, with description text. Customize them to help end users know what is expected.
For this template project, there are image placeholders for partner logos. The client had a good question, which went into a more detailed conversation about what a good logo is. So, we updated the placeholder text to provide technical guidance.
PowerPoint has hundreds of backend options that can be preset – making placeholders helpful is just one of them our design team at TLC Creative Services customizes.
Troy @ TLC
New Episode at The Presentation Podcast!
The Presentation Guild represents us, the presentation industry representation. The Guild’s monthly email newsletter with its list of activities and opportunities for presentation designers inspired this episode. We are joined by 4 of the current Guild board members to talk about the Presentation Guild, its events, how they are announced, who can attend, what is planned, and more! Listen HERE.
Troy @ TLC
“Backstage”
I had to share this setup from a recent corporate event. I am onsite managing the presentations for a large event, in what I call my “office for the week”. But this one was a bit unique.
First the tech setup was a single 8′ table for 3 techs (I generally have a 6′ table for my computers, monitors and space to have presenters review, and edit slides). Fortunately, I include a computer stacker in my tech kit. But what made this really unique is where the tech area is. I am generally backstage, or sometimes front of house. But for this meeting, the room was a bit small and in order to maximize attendee seating (~250 attendees), I was outside the meeting room in the hall!
On the positive side, I did not need any of the work lights I pack for the dark backstage environment!
Troy @ TLC
Things Not Working, Check Microsoft Updates
ote, this post is for Windows only (although Mac has its own dilemmas with update needs). I find that a feature I have been using, perhaps earlier that same day, suddenly is not available or does not work. My new thinking is things do not continue working until broken, they now work until Windows or something Microsoft has an update and things stop working because they see an update is needed.
I am constantly running 4 update checks to limit these random not working/error messages. Most likely only need 3 apply to your, but I am covering all 4.
Windows OS updates
Go to Start > Settings > Windows Update > click Windwos Update (in upper right)
Click Check for updates
O365 Updates
Open PowerPoint > File > Account > Update Options > Update Now.
Windows Store updates
The Windows Store is controlling more and more of the installed apps.
In the Start menu search for “Store”
Select and open the Microsoft Store app > Library > Get updates.
Lenovo Vantage
This only applies to Lenovo computers, but Dell, Asus and others have their own update apps.
In the Start menu search for “Lenovo”
Select and open the Lenovo Commercial Vantage app > Run System Update
Install updates following information provided.
This is a lot of ongoing effort. It feels that more the 50% of the time, whatever issue I was having is resolved with these updates. Hopefully this is a good reference and resource!
Troy @ TLC