Confessions of a closet graphic designer

I really enjoy graphic design projects, however I only discovered this a few years ago.  It’s become one of my favorite creative outlets, for example I created the posters above. I have no formal training, anything I know comes from what I have read in books, by trial and error and by studying the work of professional graphic designers. The tool I use is PowerPoint, which I am sure isn’t the norm for the “pros”.  Actually it works well for a amateur like me since it is designed to put words and images together on a page/slide and is relatively easy to use.  I guess PowerPoint was the natural tool for me… Read More

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Are you using “shiny happy people” in your slides?

A couple months ago I was asked to help some colleagues design and deliver a major presentation for a project at a children’s hospital.  We didn’t have much time to plan our strategy. To get started I did a short email survey asking everyone what they thought the main message/theme of the presentation should be, and I chatted with my colleagues who knew the audience best.   In the end we chose a simple but meaningful theme “It’s about the kids”. We wanted the presentation visuals to amplify our message.  This turned out to be a challenge. All we could find in our marketing database were images of “shiny happy children”,… Read More

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Want to make a video? Why not use PowerPoint?

PowerPoint has a variety of applications. In addition to designing slides for presentations I have used it to make promotional posters and to design logos and buttons for the animal welfare groups that I am involved with (see Life by PowerPoint). I have also started creating videos.  You can insert music to link to your slides (for the  examples below I used music from iStockPhoto.com).  For me, the biggest challanges in making videos with Powerpoint are telling my story in just a couple of minutes (I recommend you keep you videos to 2-3 minutes), and having the music timed just right. Re timing: using the Transitions tab you can select the transition… Read More

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