Working Smarter with powerpoint

Kargo Klassroom has returned with an all-new 3-part curriculum exploring the essentials of the fan-favorite presenting tool, Microsoft PowerPoint. Release your inner designer as we learn how to create beautiful presentations and get comfortable with basic and advanced features!

Part 1: Design Tools in PowerPoint

• Setting up PowerPoint to optimize visual slide design, maximize the use of the grids, guidelines, and the content canvas, customizing the Quick Access Toolbar as well as tips on the best add-ins to make creating PowerPoint slides even more effective.

• Utilizing the Notes Page and setting up a presentation by optimizing Presenter View with Speaker Notes.

• Quickly hacking current slide layouts and placeholders in a template to create better slides while still staying on brand.

Part 2: Creating Visuals in PowerPoint

• Building quick, easy, and effective slide effects using the Animation tools as well as new features such as Zoom links and Morph transitions.

• Best practices on using images in slides - finding images, cropping to shapes, resizing the aspect ratio, compressing to optimized size - all inside of PowerPoint.

• Creating graphics and icons with the underused, built-in merge tools and how to hack and use SmartArt.bullets

Part 3: Design Principles

• Why "Death by PowerPoint" exists and how to avoid it by creating different types of presentations for different purposes (presentations vs documents and smart ways to combine them to save time).

• Easy design principles for non-designers, including before and after examples.

• How to handle text-intensive slides - principles for minimizing bullet points and simplifying slide content.

Homework Assignments & Handouts:

Download the assignments and sample the Quick Access Toolbar (QAT) file HERE.

Note: Instructions on the homework projects and how to use the QAT file are in the PowerPoint files.