Lab 6: PowerPoint Introduction

In this lab, we'll use PowerPoint to create a simple, but professional, presentation. Remember to call me over when you submit it, so that you can get credit. As always, if time runs out and you have to go somewhere, you may email me your presentation for credit (whether or not it was finished).

Go ahead and start up PowerPoint. We'll be making a presentation designed to convince investors that they should give us lots of money so that we can launch our imaginary product/service/business. In a real presentation, you would spend lots of time making your bullet points brief and exact. Don't worry about that here.

First decide on something you want to sell. You don't have to be serious or realistic. For example, you could want to start a business which sells pet rocks, invisible cars, space ships, or magic beans. Be creative!

The general outline of this lab is as follows:

1. Create the content (several slides with words / bullets on them)
2. Change the presentation theme
3. Add in some animation to assist the presentation

Create a new, blank, boring presentation (if one was not already created for you by PowerPoint). This'll be your title page. Type up a title and then give it a subtitle. Something like "Space Ships R Us" with a subtitle of "A Business Proposal By Ryan Moore" is suitable. Obviously, you should use your own title and subtitle.

Create 3 new slides after the title slide. Change the layout of each to the layout called "Section Header". Change the title of each of the 3 blank section headers to be "What?" "Why?" and "Resources Required" (in that order). Our presentation will discuss what we want to do, why the investors would want to fund us, and then what we need from them in order to start the business. Add appropriate subtitles, if you want. For example, on the "Resources Required" slide a subtitle might say, "Staff, Funding & Time Until Profitability"

We'll now work on the "What?" section first. Insert a blank slide in between the "What?" and the "Why?" slides. Change the layout of that new slide to the standard "Title and Content" layout. Give the slide a title, the choice is yours, but the content should address what your idea is in only a few brief bullets. One of the bullets should have sub bullets. A sample pattern might be (be sure to actually use real words / ideas, and don't just type out "[product idea]"):

• We would like to develop and sell [product idea, e.g. flying lawn chairs]
• The technology is almost entirely there, e.g:
  • [technology 1, e.g., helium balloons]
  • [technology 2, e.g., lawn chairs]
  • [technology 3, e.g., sand bags]
• What's left?
  • Develop [self-assembling technology] and combine [1,2,3] to create a new, cheap product that consumers will want to use when [activity here, e.g., flying around their yards in a lawn chair]

Now, we'll add some content to the "Why?" section. Again, insert a blank slide with a "Title and Content" layout. Then, give it some bulleted content. Here's some example bullets (don't steal my idea, I want you to make your own):

• Humans have always been fascinated with flying
• Invention of air planes allows us to fly
  • Planes are heavy, expensive, and require specialized training
  • Therefore, the average American cannot use them on a daily basis or at family gatherings for entertainment
• By creating a cheap, portable method of flying using already existing technology we can create a flying lawn chair product to fulfill a primitive desire of humanity: flying

Now, we'll add some content to the "Resources Required" section. This time insert 2 blank slides with a "Title and Content" layout. Then, give the first one a title of "Time" and the second a title of "Money"

On the time slide, just put in a few bullets of how long you think it'll take your company to develop the prototype, how long it'll be before it's ready for mass production, and how long it'll take to train the employees. On the money slide, list what you need. For example, you may pretend to need a testing facility, mass amounts of bubble gum, some web servers, a marketing budget, and $1,000,000 for expenses and money to start production.

Insert a new blank slide (with a title/content layout) and make it your conclusion slide. The conclusion slide should say something about how with the investors' help, in X months a product can be created and on the market and that it is expected to make Y dollars of net profit each year.

Lastly, insert a blank title slide after the conclusion slide and just make it say something like, "Thank you for your time and attention!". In the subtitle area, put maybe something like, "Are there any questions?"

Your presentation should have content now, but is probably boring. So go ahead and do each of the following:

1. On the Design tab, pick a theme which is something you kind of like or which matches your product/idea. For example, a business/professional look for a new business, or a high tech and sharp look for a new technology idea. Be sure to think about WHY that look is a good look.
2. Change the overall color theme of the new design to one of Office's many color themes. Choose one that is NEARLY what you might want. For example, you may want bright bold colors for a presentation about paint. Be sure to think about WHY those colors are a good look.
3. Now, let's slightly modify the color theme to perfectly suit our presentation. Again, on the Design tab, click Colors then choose "Create New Color Theme." Change at least 2 of the colors. The 2 colors that you should change should change how your presentation looks (i.e., not all presentations make use of ALL of the colors in a theme). You'll have to click "Save" to see how your new colors look in the presentation. If you want to go back and edit your colors, you should see custom colors appear as an item with a name like "Custom Colors 1." Then, just right click that theme and choose "Modify".
4. Change the font theme used for your presentations. This can be done by going to the Design tab, then clicking "Fonts" (right under the "Colors" button).
5. Insert at least 2 pieces of clip art into your presentation. These should match the look of your slides. For example, the "What?" slide might be a good place to show what your product will look like.

You don't want to use animation too much. However, as discussed in class, one good place to add animations is when using bulleted lists; by slowly revealing the contents of a bulleted list, the audience is forced to focus on the current discussion topic.

To do this, go to the Animations tab. Then, click on a bulleted list (as if you're going to edit it). Then, in the "Animations" section we see a drop down box labelled "Animations." Choose an animation style that you like. For example, "Fade by 1st Level Paragraphs" might be a good choice. Do this to each of the bulleted lists in the presentation.

Then find 1 bulleted list that has sub-bullets. Use the custom animation pane to change how your animated list behaves.

Sometimes slide transitions are desirable. Go ahead and add at least one slide transition. Don't worry about whether it seems out of place in the presentation.

Lastly, find your clip art and apply a custom animation to it. To do this, go to the Animations tab, click the picture you wish to animate, then under the "Animations" section, choose "Custom Animation." Add an effect that you like. In a real presentation, you would have to be very careful to not use too much animation or to use cheesy distracting animations. But, don't worry about that here. Apply at LEAST 2 animation effects to at LEAST 1 object. For example, a piece of clip could have both an entrance and an exit animation.

You can find the presentation that I did at this link here.