Until pretty recently, ID was a job that was mostly creating effective slides for presentations. To that end, there are many ID's who "know" PowerPoint. Heck, most business folks and professors know PowerPoint. Nowadays, kids learn how to use PowerPoint in junior high school. It is a somewhat ubiquitous tool.
However, it's come to my attention (not just now, but over the past few years) that PowerPoint is a largely underutilized tool. PowerPoint has developer tools (an Add-In). PowerPoint has numerous customization options. Because of this complexity, I started thinking about whether or not there are any standardized and accepted best practices out there for PowerPoint.
Guess what?
There really doesn't seem to be anything really clear when I do a cursory web search (I'll keep looking). There are tons of tips and tricks. There are numerous "good" and "bad" examples. In fact, I really liked
this webinar, which shows numerous slide "makeovers" based on basic visual design concepts. That could be one important element of designing a "best practice".
The next thing to consider is something that we've been grappling with at the office. Something that seems so obvious but is an error that has been repeated ad nauseum in corporations all over the world. It is that of the PowerPoint template. With changing versions of PowerPoint as well as employees rotating in and out of projects (employees with varying degrees of skill when it comes to PowerPoint), there is this phenomenon that I am going to call The Tempblend. It is what happens when lots of slides from different places come together in a single presentation. It's the melting pot of colors, graphics, typefaces and layouts. It is what you don't want when you have to go into a giant brand conversion or upgrade; I am willing to bet it happens EVERYWHERE.
While most corporate old-timers are probably aware of this issue, I personally had never been exposed to this level of detail when it came to PowerPoint. When you teach on your own at a college or in a classroom you have complete autonomy over your slides and your material. We are generally left to our own devices when it comes to slide management.
But, in a situation where there's turnover and varying degrees of skill and competency on a team, the Tempblend and other disasters are usually lying in wait. Is there a way to overcome these problems and improve slide management?
I did find
one article about scalability which basically says, "this is a problem and there is no good answer." At least there's acknowledgment.
The only takeaways for me about this common ID problem are:
1. Be as consistent as possible with PowerPoint templates. A good template
- Use only the master slide(s) you need
- Name your new template's layout slides
- Use whatever Layout slides you have
- Do not copy and paste slides from other places indiscriminately. The Reuse Slides option in PowerPoint 2013 guards somewhat against this, but if you were careless in the past, then the problems of reusing slides may still appear.
- Check for artefacts from old masters (View -> Master Slide) and delete unwanted slides in the Master.
- After an import, verify that Layouts are applied to slides.
2. Gain some skill in Visual Basic in order to automate fixes.
3. Look around and find tools to help fix the problems you see. Sometimes you have to pay, sometimes not. I found one tool that will fix image issues when you switch from 4:3 to 16:9.
