Datasheet

In the following sections, I explain more about these individual elements and

then follow it up with how they team together to form an entire presentation

workflow. I discuss each of these elements in greater depth in separate chap-

ters throughout this book.

Text

Text is the soul of a presentation — it relates to content like nothing else.

Your text could be in the form of titles, subtitles, bullets, phrases, captions,

and even sentences.

A barrage of visual content might not be able to achieve what a single effec-

tive word can say — sometimes, a word is worth a thousand pictures. Text is

significant because it means you have something to say. Without explicit text,

what you’re trying to say might not come through as strongly as you want.

Too much text is like too much of any good thing — it can be harmful. For

example, a slide with 20 lines of teeny-weeny text just doesn’t work. The audi-

ence can’t read it, and the presenter doesn’t have time to explain that much

content! Anyway, if you’re cramming so much text on a slide, you’ve already

lost the focus of your presentation.

Backgrounds, images, and info-graphics

PowerPoint uses three types of graphical elements:

⻬ Backgrounds: The backdrop for your slides. Backgrounds need to be

understated.

You can create a great presentation with a plain white background. On

the other hand, artistic backgrounds are a great way to bring a presenta-

tion to life.

The new

themes in PowerPoint 2007 also let you recolor background

graphics by applying new

Theme Colors. These are explained in more

detail in Chapter 3.

⻬ Pictures: Images that you insert in slides. Pictures share the stage

with text.

⻬ Info-graphics: Images that combine visuals and text to make complex

information and statistics easier to understand. Info-graphics include

charts, tables, maps, graphs, diagrams, organization charts, timelines,

and flowcharts. You can also create info-graphics in a separate program,

such as SmartDraw or Visio, and bring them into PowerPoint later.

Chapter 1: PowerPointing with the Best of Them

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