Interview with Echo Swinford, PowerPoint Author and Consultant
Q&A with Echo Swinford, who is presenting at the 2025 Presentation Design Conference for CreativePro
Echo Swinford has been a Microsoft PowerPoint MVP for 25 years. She has authored four PowerPoint books and and is the owner of Echosvoice, a PowerPoint consulting firm.
Echo is also speaking at our upcoming online event, The Presentation Design Conference, which takes place March 12-14, 2025. We thought it would be fun to get to know her better with some Q&A.
What is the biggest mistake designers make in PowerPoint?
This is going to seem silly, but designers often forget to run through their presentation in slide show view before they finalize it.
Of course this is important to do so that you catch odd animations and transitions. It’s also important to ensure that slide titles and logos, etc., aren’t bouncing around. But just as important … I can’t tell you how many times I see background graphics with a random stray pixel or two around the edges of the slides. No matter if you’re creating a “slideument” for PDF or presenting on a 20-foot screen, seeing a random white pixel at the edge of a dark slide or page just looks sloppy.
Favorite feature in PowerPoint that you wouldn’t want to live without?
Oof, that’s not a fair question! It’s like picking a favorite kid!?
If I can name an add-in, I’d say Thor, the tool that hammers things into place. I owe its creator (Steve Rindsberg) so many beers for saving me so much time.
In PowerPoint specifically, I think the merge shapes tools give us incredible flexibility with so many things, from simple shapes and outlined text to placeholders, images, and video.
I also have to give a shout-out to Morph. If I had to do more animation for my clients than I typically do, it would probably be my number one.
Best suggestion or tip for anyone new to presentation design?
Learn some PowerPoint basics and lean into them rather than fight them. Templates, placeholders, colors, and fonts can be either super helpful or a nightmare. If you learn a bit about how PowerPoint works, you can leverage these to your benefit and save time overall. But if you don’t understand them, you’ll waste a lot of time and be frustrated that PowerPoint doesn’t work the way you want it to.
Most unexpected use for PowerPoint that you’ve seen (or done)?
Eh, this is pretty simple, but I use PowerPoint as a room-planning tool when I want to rearrange the furniture. It was great when I wanted to make sure that both my treadmill and rowing machine could fit into my office!
Of course I have many clients who use PowerPoint as a desktop publishing tool for brochures, posters, and leave-behind documents. Even though it’s not really designed for print, sometimes PowerPoint is the only tool the team has available for that stuff. But I think those are pretty common uses. Huge props to the folks who are out there creating games and animated videos with PowerPoint. I’m insanely impressed!
What are you most excited to share in your upcoming session?
I’m excited to talk about the different types of picture placeholders. I realized about a year ago that we actually do already have a logo placeholder – something we’ve been clamoring for for more than 15 years!
This article was last modified on April 26, 2025
This article was first published on January 22, 2025
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