Using Creative Fabrica with PowerPoint and Presentations

If you ever had to do a presentation of any sort you’ve likely used something like Microsoft PowerPoint. Or if you are on a Mac you have likely used Apple Keynote. They are great visual presentation tools for teaching, pitching, and sometimes entertaining. PowerPoints are used in many environments ranging from the classroom to the office. PowerPoints require the presenter to take complicated concepts and present them in bullet point-sized chunks. To do this effectively you need great visuals to match your topics. Creative Fabrica is a great resource to help with that.

Preparing the material and content

Before starting you need to go through your research, and materials to decide what you will present and how. Do you have spreadsheets? Do you have images? It is good to start making a list of the content you have and start outlining what you will want to present. Decide what you will show in pictures and what will be text and what you will say out loud. If you are trying to figure out the order of your presentation you can try the below method.

1. Introduction
2. Hypothesis
3. Detail and methods used to collect data
4. Data Presentation
5. Conclusion

The theme and overall look of your presentation

Early on you will need to decide the overall look you want. You can create this from scratch, or you can select one of the many PowerPoint templates and infographics. In the search bar on Creative Fabrica type in PowerPoint and you will see many options. After doing this many options will pop up. On the left side, you will see a list of categories. Placing a check on what category will help narrow down your search. Scroll through the different styles and looks and find the one that is best suited to your topic and your audience.

You can also just look through themes to get an idea of how to customize your own. A search for backgrounds or shapes can give you elements that you can place on your page to start forming your own look.

Finding the right visuals

For demonstration purposes, we worked on a presentation mockup for an AV company. The idea is to create a pitch deck for their services. If you type in AV, or video in the Creative Fabrica search finder you will see many great options. When it comes to your brand or theme a simple search of your topic will likely come back with many results. When selecting your images, you will want to find something that you can use consistently throughout. We found some icons that worked well together. They weren’t the right color, so we edited them in Photoshop. Even if you find the right image you will likely need to edit your images in a program. Microsoft Paint which comes with many PC’s can crop and cut out images and even fill in colors on icons.

After you get the images you want you can insert them in PowerPoint by hitting the Insert Tab. Then select pictures and find the pictures you want to insert. You will be able to drag and drop the images as well as resize them.

If you are needing images that are more like clipart or specific objects for topics you can find many of those too. It may take some researching and be creative but there Is likely something for every need.

Making Charts

If your presentation needs to show visuals of data then you may consider finding chart and graph elements in Creative Fabrica. The Charts Widgets Dashboard from 3djagan is broken up into layers that can be easily customized in photoshop.

Maps and locations

If you need to visually show locations then you may consider some of the isometric map creators located throughout Creative Fabrica. These templates have roads, buildings, and even 3d vehicles.

TIPS FOR A GOOD POWERPOINT PRESENTATION:

1. Keep it simple.
2. Keep it consistent. Same fonts for headlines.
3. No more than 4 different fonts throughout.
4. Font sizes should not be smaller than 24 point.
5. Ornate fonts can be hard to read.
6. Make sure the fonts you choose will be on the computer your present from.
7. Don’t have too many words on the screen.
8. Reduce the number of slides. Too many and you may lose people’s attention.
9. Don’t put all text in capital letters.
10. Empty space can be a good thing. It helps words and images stand out.
11. Make sure words contrast with the background.
12. Pattern backgrounds make it hard to read text.
13. Putting text in boxes or shapes can help make them stand out.
14. Practice your presentation.
15. Learn how to get to areas of your presentation out of order in case you need to revisit an area.
16. During a presentation make sure you are facing the audience not the screen
17. Don’t read from the screen

This is just a brief summary of the resources Creative Fabrica has for your PowerPoint presentations. With thousands of Icons, clip art, fonts, templates, backgrounds, and shapes you will be able to make any presentation you need.