(Not Jacob-Elordi-in-Frankenstein cute. But a monstrous mess.)

A mix of font sizes, colors, alignment, spacing, and graph styles.

Text heavy.

Boring graphs.

Barely alive.

You deserve Jacob-Elordi-as-Heathcliff gorgeous slides!

Professional. Streamlined. Intentional. Visuals on every slide. Skimmable. Accessible.

Slide Templates help you avoid Frankensteined Slides

Templates also eliminate the “stare at a blank slide” tax. You start with a ready-made structure that does the heavy lifting for you.

Templates save hours of formatting time. A good template bakes in hierarchy, spacing, and structure—so you can focus on your message, not nudging text boxes pixel by pixel.

Templates scale your best design practices across the whole org. Even non‑designers can produce clean, on‑brand slides because the template does the heavy lifting.

Do you really have slide templates…?

Most companies I work with think they have templates – but they don’t.

Here’s how to check: When you insert a new slide, do you see Microsoft’s defaults? Or your custom-designed slides?

Setting Up the Slide Master

Templates live behind the scenes, in the Slide Master.

Go to View –> Slide Master and make sure you’ve got ’em there.

Heads up: The Slide Master is a massive pain. Counterintuitive. All sorts of quirks.

Your Turn

What sorts of questions do you have about the Slide Master?

Comment here and let me know.

I might even make a new blog post or YouTube video for you.

The post No more Frankensteined slides! appeared first on Depict Data Studio.

Creating a Customer Service Visual Framework

I present a lot and have given customer service presentations in different forms and fashions for over 15 years. I usually get compliments on my presentations, but I wanted to make sure the information I was presenting was sticking with people. I needed to refresh a customer service presentation and decided to use it as an opportunity to apply the lessons from Powerful Presentations I was learning.

I had my framework in my head, but I was skeptical that with my skill level I could create something useful and decent to look at.  I am a librarian, not a graphic designer.

Begin at the Very Beginning…..It’s a Very Good Place to Start

Despite my doubts, I began.  Focusing on my outline, I had 5 areas I wanted to touch on.  I matched icons to each and then thought about what I could construct to bring them all together.  I realized that the Center Humanity portion was a target with four sections.  So that is where I started. 

Be Literal

I decided to be very literal and created a circle and wrote center humanity and put it in the center of the target icon.

This was the central point I wanted people listening me to take away.  That each person they interact with is another human being and we should remember that first and foremost in every customer service interaction.

Combine the Elements

I then put one section near each of the quadrants on the target and added the wording below.  I gave each its own color so that in my slide deck each would have a separate color to help tie people’s brains to that section. 

At this point, I had done nothing too hard, downloaded a few icons, recolored them, and added wording.  I could have stopped here and I think it would have been ok.

Pause for Reflection

But I chose to get some feedback to see if I could make it better.

At this point I paused and brought it to Office Hours for suggestions. 

Shout out to all the fabulous people who shared ideas with me and helped make this visual framework more meaningful for my presentation.

Tweak for More Impact

I received lots of great ideas and my head was spinning with all the different ways I could possibly update my visual to resonate more with my audience.  I decided to start by making the target look more like a target while keeping the center humanity in the center. 

Add More Visual Cues

I wanted to make the four other sections clearer and tie things together. I took a duplicate of the target icon and recolored it and then used the crop tool to shrink it to only one quadrant.

This is what it looked like when I was finished. 

Rinse & Repeat

I then did the same for Green, Red, and Purple.

Four Quadrants

This is what it looked like when I was finished with all the quadrants. 

I was liking where it was going and thought this would stick in people’s heads better than the original. 

Keep Centering Humanity

I was hooked on keeping the circle and plopped it on top of all the different graphics I had just created. 

This would be an easy graphic to chunk and use in my slide decks and I felt like I was on the right track.

Adding Icons

I changed some of the icons after thinking through what I was trying to convey and added them by each section. 

I was getting closer, but it still didn’t feel finished to me.

Librarians Love Words

I thought I could get away with leaving the words off and just having the icons, but it looked too bare to me.  I used Word Art and after a bunch of trial and error got the words to curve at the right angle. 

It now felt complete. 

I used the Group tool to group all of the separate graphics together and saved it as an Image.

Success!

And while I thought it was pretty great, I didn’t know if it would be helpful for attendees.  But it was! 

In the feedback, one attendee wrote that they printed off the framework and put it on their desk as a reminder to them to follow the 5 steps. 

That made my day and solidified for me why having a visual framework is so helpful.  We don’t want to just give people presentations, we want what we share to stay with people and be useful. 

The post Unlocking Creativity: Simple Steps for Non-Designers to Build Powerful Visual Frameworks appeared first on Depict Data Studio.

(Well, if you like to split hairs, there are more options than that. But what if you’re busy and don’t have time to lose? Here are the main copying/pasting options worth paying attention to.)

Option 1: Excel Object

a.k.a. Ann K. Emery’s preferred approach

Instructions

1. In Excel, create your graph.
2. In Excel, format your graph. (Declutter; apply brand colors and dark-light contrast; delete the built-in title; re-size the font and graph; etc.)
3. In Excel, make sure your Theme Colors and Theme Fonts are selected.
4. In Word or PowerPoint, make sure your Theme Colors and Theme Fonts are selected.
5. In Excel, copy your chart (CTRL + C, or right-click and select copy).
6. In Word or PowerPoint, click CTRL + V to paste.
7. In Word or PowerPoint, add your graph title.

Branding

Colors and fonts will match the destination.

Editing

You can edit the chart in Word/PowerPoint later if needed.

(You can change the colors, size, labels, etc.)

Resolution

Higher.

File Size

Higher.

Linking

You can link your Word/PowerPoint graph back to the Excel file. (Beware! Errors likely!)

Option 2: Image File

Not a fan.

Instructions

1. In Excel, create your graph.
2. In Excel, format your graph. (Declutter; apply brand colors and dark-light contrast; delete the built-in title; re-size the font and graph; etc.)
3. In Excel, make sure your Theme Colors and Theme Fonts are selected.
4. In Word or PowerPoint, make sure your Theme Colors and Theme Fonts are selected.
5. In Excel, copy your chart (CTRL + C, or rightclick and select copy).
6. In Word or PowerPoint, right-click, select paste, and choose the image option.
7. In Word or PowerPoint, add your graph title.

Branding

Colors and fonts will match the source.

Editing

You can’t edit the chart in Word/PowerPoint later.

(You’d need to edit the chart in Excel, and then re-paste the graph into Word/PowerPoint.)

Resolution

Lower.

File Size

Lower.

Linking

You can’t link your Word/PowerPoint graph back to the Excel file.

(In other words, if you change the graph in Excel, then the image file in Word or PowerPoint won’t look any different.)

Purchase the Cheat Sheet

It’s here: https://depictdatastudio.gumroad.com/l/CopyPasteGraphsFromExcelIntoWordOrPowerPoint

The first 100 people get a complimentary download with code NOMOREGRAINYSCREENSHOTS.

The post How to Copy/Paste Graphs from Excel into Word or PowerPoint appeared first on Depict Data Studio.

Maybe you’d like to showcase your company’s achievements over the past year.

Maybe you’d like to celebrate your own achievements.

Infographics are a great way to visualize key points (without boring our audiences, which can happen in lengthy reports).

Back in December 2022, Sue Griffey brought her draft infographics to our weekly Office Hours.

In this blog post, you’ll see Sue Griffey’s annual infographic for her global mentoring practice, SueMentors.

You’ll also see several of Sue’s drafts. I hope this behind-the-scenes view helps you develop your own infographic.

Watch the Progression

You can watch Sue’s progression here.

This is a 7-minute segment from an hour-long Office Hours session.

Here’s what’s inside.

Sue’s Previous Infographics

First, Sue shared three examples of past years’ infographics.

Draft 1: Six Tiles of Content

Then, we talked about orientation.

Should her infographic be square?

Rectangular??

Portrait???

Landscape????

A single image?????

Several standalone images??????

A decade ago, infographics were mostly portrait. I’ll never forget Chris Lysy’s cartoon from 2014, where he joked that 2:32 aspect ratio infographics could practically be used as belts.

Nowadays, infographics can be any orientation. Ideally, we’d customize the infographic to the platform where it’s being shared.

For example, Instagram used to require squares, although you can upload square or rectangular images nowadays. And now the algorithm prefers short video Reels over images. It’s tough to keep up!

What does LinkedIn’s algorithm prefer? That’s Sue’s primary platform for connecting with others. Should her infographic be square? Rectangular?? How about both???

We considered a modular, grid-like design.

Sue already had 6 buckets of information. What a nice round number!

That means she could organize her 6 existing topics in landscape…

…and/or portrait…

…and/or as 6 individual social media posts.

In the video, you’ll see Sue’s very first draft:

Draft 2: Adjusting Colors and Adding Visuals

Next, Sue “softened all the brand colors.”

She added icons.

She added white overlays to de-emphasize the icons.

Draft 3: Focusing on Brand Blue

Sue decided to go back to “one panel of blue” (her brand color).

She added a “road map” within the TV icon.

She created a bit.ly link so that readers could learn more.

She continued softening the icons.

 “I challenged myself to take out even more words,” Sue explained.

Final Version: Smaller Boxes with More “White” Space

On New Year’s Eve Day, Sue finished her “80% is good enough” final draft.

She made the boxes smaller, which added more “white” space between the buckets of information.

Next Steps

In all her “spare” time, Sue might write a long-form blog post to elaborate on each of these 6 topics.

(She did provide additional details in a document shared publicly on Dropbox, too.)

But, as we discussed in the video, “there are endless ways to recycle content.” At some point, we have to create deadlines for ourselves and move on to the next item on our to-do lists.

Software Used: Microsoft PowerPoint

During Office Hours, another participant asked Sue which software platform she used to create her year-end infographic.

It’s PowerPoint!

Sue said, “It’s the easiest way to move photos around and to keep graphics together.”

In a previous Office Hours, we opened Canva together and browsed their year-end infographic templates. I wasn’t impressed. There were just bullet points, icons, and photos—all of which can be handled inside PowerPoint, too. Plus, Sue’s already comfortable in PowerPoint. Every new software platform has a learning curve. We can’t spend time learning them all. PowerPoint worked perfectly fine and there was no reason to switch.

“I did feel like I was moving information around and conveying things much better than I did a year ago,” Sue said. I agree. Well done!!!

Connect with Sue Griffey

You can view Sue’s infographic on LinkedIn here.

And don’t forget to connect with Sue on LinkedIn.

The post The Progression of Sue Griffey’s Year-End Infographic appeared first on Depict Data Studio.

Last week, I was leading a post-conference workshop with CQI professionals in California. You can learn more about their annual conferences here.

An attendee asked about best practices for adding photographs to our PowerPoint presentations.

Before

Let’s pretend that you’re giving a presentation about young children and physical fitness.

Avoid Tiny, Grainy Photos

Here’s what I often see: small, low-resolution photos.

It gets The Big Red X.

I want your presentations to look professional, but this one’s giving outdated, unprofessional vibes.

Avoid Small, High-Resolution Photos

Nowadays, it’s easier than ever to find high-resolution photos.

I’ve tried dozens of photo sites, and my favorite is still Pexels.com.

All of their photos are free for both commercial and educational use.

You don’t need to create an account to download their photos (one less username and password to remember!).

You don’t need to add citations to your photos (so your slides stay uncluttered).

Over the past couple years, they’ve added more photos from international photographers, so you’ll see beautiful skin tones and hairstyles showcased among the models.

Here’s the next draft with a high-resolution photo:

Avoid Awkwardly-Enlarged Photos

We’ve solved the grainy issue.

Next, let’s solve the size issue.

I often see slides like this, where the photo is placed awkwardly on the slide.

We can’t keep those white slivers along the sides.

Avoid Stretched Photos

Please please please don’t stretch photos.

Yes, we want full-screen photos. But we must keep the aspect ratio (the proportions) intact.

Be careful if you’re manually dragging the sides, top, or bottom of the photo, as shown below.

The stretching is hardly recognizable on this particular photo, since it shows the backs of young children. But if you stretched a photo of someone’s face, it would be immediately noticeable (and it would look unprofessional).

Avoid Full-Screen Photos with Unreadable Text

As you’re enlarging photos to fill the entire screen—so the audience feels like watching the action from the 50-yard line, not the nosebleeds—make sure you grab the corner.

Grabbing the corner will ensure that photo doesn’t get stretched awkwardly (i.e., it maintains the aspect ratio).

Full-screen photos often fall off the edges of the slide, like this. That feels weird at first! Don’t worry; the audience will only see the completed version, with the beautiful full-screen photo. They won’t know that, behind the scenes, an inch of the photo is falling off the edge of the screen.

After

We’ve got a full-screen photo, woohoo!

Next, let’s make sure the words are readable (i.e., that we have enough contrast to meet official accessibility guidelines).

Full-Screen Photos with a White Overlay

To make sure the words are readable, try adding a white overlay.

Go to Insert –> Shape and draw a large rectangle over the entire slide. Then, adjust the transparency. This one has 15% transparency.

Your audience will easily read the large, 32-point font. And they’ll see the photo peeking out from behind, too.

In this example, the words are the star, and the photo is the sidekick.

Full-Screen Photos with a Colored Overlay

You can use brand-colored overlays, too.

The words are still the star, and the photo is still the sidekick.

Full-Screen Photos with White Text Boxes

In this example, I kept the photo’s original colors.

The text box is filled with white (with a 10% transparency so you can slightly see the photo peeking through the text).

The photo is the star now, and the words are the sidekick.

Full-Screen Photos with Colored Text Boxes

I think you get the idea by now.

You could also fill the text box with one of your brand colors, like this:

Phew! In these redesigned slides, our full-screen photos put the audience in the middle of the action, and the text is readable.

What If My Photo Isn’t Landscape?

We can’t always find landscape photos to fit our landscape slides.

Maybe the photo we want is square, circular, or portrait-oriented, like this one.

We can’t expand those pictures to fill the slide, or they might get too big.

Enlarge the Photo to Fit the Height (or Width) of the Slide

I often enlarge those photos to fill the height of my slide, even if they don’t fill the width of the slide, like this:

Experiment with Removing the Background

When I’m adding headshots to slides, sometimes I remove the background.

(This rarely works with non-headshot photos, like the photo of the children playing. Computers get confused, and they often mix up the background and foreground.)

PowerPoint does have a Remove Background button (!). To use it, click on the picture to activate it, then go to Picture Format –> Remove Background.

But PowerPoint’s Remove Background button is meh. It’s a newish feature and Microsoft still has some fine-tuning to work out.

Instead, I upload the photos to Canva, remove the background, download the edited version, and insert that into PowerPoint.

Canva gives me the correct results 90% of the time, whereas Microsoft gives me correct results 10% of the time.

Now, the photo and the words flow better, since they’re both against a white background.

Finally, you can try colored slide backgrounds, like this. You’d use your brand colors, not mine.

I think this final design might be my favorite of the batch.

All of these redesigns are better than the tiny, grainy original, don’t you agree?

Download My Slides

Want to explore these slides? Download them here.

The post Stop Using Tiny, Grainy Photos in PowerPoint!!! appeared first on Depict Data Studio.

We’re all familiar with the obvious signs of Death by PowerPoint:

• Text-wall slides with bullet points for daaaays.
• Using filler words (um, like, so).
• Multiple graphs smushed on one slide with tiny text.
• Tiny, grainy images with cheesy stock photography models.

But are you familiar with the subtle signs of Death by PowerPoint?

10 Subtle Signs of Death by PowerPoint

Here are 10 subtle signs that our presentations might need some TLC:

Spending Too Much or Too Little Time Making Slides

Are you making the slides the night before? That’s not enough time.

I’m guilty. I used to make slides on the plane on the way to the conference.

Or, maybe you’re running into the opposite challenge: Are you spending too much time making slides?

Again, I’m guilty. Sometimes I’d waste an entire weekend making slides for a big talk.

If your time management falls on either extreme—you’re spending too little time or too much time making the slides—then that’s a subtle sign of Death by PowerPoint.

Poor time management à poor presentation quality à adverse effects on our audience.

Running Out of Time to Make Handouts

In a perfect world, every presentation would be accompanied by a separate handout, one-pager, or even technical report.

In reality, I used to just share a PDF’d copy of my slides. I wasn’t sure what to include in the handout, how to format it, or whether it was really necessary (it is!!!).

As a result, my slides were in this weird limbo: I’d strive for great-looking presentation slides with lots of images and very little text. But sometimes I’d get nervous and add too much text so that the slides could do double-duty as a handout.

When our PowerPoint has to serve two purposes, as the presentation slides and as the handout, the presentation suffers.

Losing Time on Colors and Fonts

Have you ever used one of PowerPoint’s ugly and overused templates?

I have. A dozen times.

Have you lost time searching through folders and subfolders for your organization’s templates?

Have you lost time making your own templates?

Have you lost time thinking about colors?

Fonts?

Photos?

Sure, it takes time to create an initial corporate template with Theme Colors and Theme Fonts.

But these Word Hard Once techniques save a ton of time in the long run.

Losing time before each presentation on colors and fonts is a sure sign of Death by PowerPoint. When our minds are distracted by the minutiae of slide design, our audience feels the effects.

Including Lots of Graphs

I bet you’re already trying to avoid text-heavy slides.

But are you actively trying to avoid graph-heavy slides?

It sounds counterintuitive, I know. I teach dataviz for a living, after all.

Our audience needs a variety of visuals. Not just graphs. They need graphs, tables, diagrams, photos, maps, logos, quotes, stories, and more.

Graph-heavy presentations are a subtle sign of Death by PowerPoint.

Having Trouble Editing Graphs

Is it tricky to update your graphs, tables, and diagrams once they’re inside PowerPoint?

Maybe you need to:

• Link your Excel spreadsheet to your PowerPoint slide (so that changes in Excel are reflected in PowerPoint);
• Make your fonts bigger or smaller in PowerPoint;
• Adjust the graph colors; or
• Change the chart type (e.g., from a vertical column chart to a horizontal bar chart).

There are plenty of behind-the-scenes techniques to make editing easier.

Editing the long, hard way is a sign of Death by PowerPoint.

Word-Vomiting Our Presentation’s “So What?”

Can you step back and write a “takeaway tweet” for your presentation?

It doesn’t matter if you’re prepping for a 5-minute update in your staff meeting, or a multi-day workshop, or a keynote speech.

You know the quote: “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”

If it takes us sentences and sentences and sentences to get to the point, then our presentation is probably causing Death by PowerPoint.

Feeling Weird on the Webcam

Pre-pandemic, were you comfortable speaking in-person?

Nowadays, in the world of daily Zooms, do you feel awkward on the webcam?

Maybe you’re:

• hesitating to turn on your webcam at all?
• wondering if you look okay?
• staring at your own face when you speak?

A lot of us feel weird on the webcam. It’s so different from being in-person.

But it doesn’t have to stay awkward.

There are plenty of rules of thumb: where to look, and for how long; which tech to use to give you a boost; and how to overcome your own self-consciousness about your appearance.

Including Lots of Details–Just in Case

Just in case someone wants to review the slides ahead of time.

Just in case someone asks a tough question.

Adding “just in case” information dilutes the power of our presentation, which is a sign of Death by PowerPoint.

Have you deleted your “just in case” graphs, tables, and diagrams?

If not, it’s Death by PowerPoint.

Guessing How to Use Our Hands

Years ago, when I first started studying public speaking, I read that I was supposed to “use my hands.”

The statistics were promising: We’re rated as being more trustworthy when the audience can see our hands.

Think of the biological roots from cavepeople days. When others can see our hands, they know we’re not holding a weapon. We’re approachable. We’re safe. We’re trustworthy.

At first, I wasn’t sure what to do:

• Hands placed firmly on the podium (for big conference talks)?
• Hands in front pockets (for smaller meetings)?
• Hands holding a notebook or tablet with notes?
• Hands holding a laser pointer?

I lost so much time guessing.

Can you explicitly name 5+ ways your hand motions can help your audience understand patterns in the data?

If not, it’s Death by PowerPoint.

Not Prioritizing Accessibility

“Little a” accessibility is making sure our graphs are easy for others to understand.

“Big A” Accessibility is making sure our graphs follow specific Federal government standards so that the can be read, viewed, and understood by people with disabilities.

Both types should be priorities in every presentation.

Can you name 5+ specific edits you’ve made to increase your presentation’s accessibility and Accessibility?

If not, it’s Death by PowerPoint.

Your Turn

How many subtle signs are you guilty of? 1, 2, 5, 10?

What about the staff members that you supervise?

The post 10 Subtle Signs of “Death by PowerPoint” appeared first on Depict Data Studio.