As a designer, it’s sometimes harder to figure out how to fix mediocre slides than to reimagine truly terrible ones. In this session, Mike Parkinson will take average, been-there-done-that slides and transform into visually stunning slides in real time. Mike will take you through his step-by-step process, transforming poorly designed content into clear, compelling visuals that captivate audiences and elevate messaging. Learn practical tips and techniques to turn bland presentations into grand designs.

Key Takeaways:

• Learn go-to practical techniques for improving tired slide content
• Discover how to jump-start creativity and find inspiration quickly
• See how simple design elements can create audience interest and value

Many PowerPoint users don’t realize that every slide rests on a template, an essential part of its underlying structure. A poorly designed template costs users time, money, and efficiency, whereas a well-constructed one is key to maximizing productivity and creating professional quality presentations.

In this session, you’ll learn how to set up slide masters, apply font themes, and work with color themes. You’ll also learn about what fonts to steer clear of, using background styles to make sure text doesn’t disappear, and avoiding “orphaned” layouts.

Key Takeaways:

• Understanding the difference between templates and themes
• Creating effective, functional layouts
• Setting up and optimizing theme fonts
• Best practices for developing color themes

Presentation audiences often have to suffer through text-heavy, static slides that do little to engage or inspire them. The solution to this problem is visual storytelling, where animation can play a critical role in creating effective and impactful presentations.

This session explores how to incorporate animation into your PowerPoint presentations to ensure they are clear, compelling, and effective. It will cover techniques you can easily replicate to pace the flow of information, convey complex ideas in elegant ways, and ensure the audience stays engaged throughout the presentation. You will learn techniques to improve the quality of your presentations and boost engagement and knowledge transfer rates.

Topic include:

• Using animations in PowerPoint effectively to enhance storytelling and design
• Combining animations to create novel effects to enrich your audience’s experience
• Creating and using animations rapidly to boost your productivity

Stop wasting hours on repetitive PowerPoint tasks when you could be flying through them in minutes! In this seminar, you will learn advanced productivity hacks that will supercharge your workflow. Discover how to maximize your efficiency and save time for what truly matters, without compromising on quality. Expect to leave with game-changing skills that will transform your presentations!

Key Takeaways:

• How to drive your Ribbon using your keyboard (turn everything into a keyboard shortcut)
• How to save and apply your favorite chart formatting (without having to recreate it every time)
• Four commands everyone should have on their QAT (including the Million-Dollar Shortcut)
• How to spin and rotate content for quick design iterations
• The closest you can get to editing content in Slide Show Mode

Discover how to use Generative AI tools, from the well-known to the up-and-coming, to create and improve presentations. In this session, presentation designer Camille Holden walks you through the key tools she uses to harness the power of AI for slide design. You’ll discover the tools and techniques for researching and fleshing out the content of your slides, adding powerful graphics and images, and refining your messaging and storytelling.

Key Takeaways:

• How to use popular and emerging Generative AI tools for slide design
• Techniques for researching and developing slide content with AI
• How to add compelling graphics and images using AI tools
• Methods to refine your messaging and storytelling with the help of AI

Are you designing data-heavy slides? Maybe you’re creating graphs, tables, maps, and diagrams from scratch or you need to fine-tune someone else’s graphs. In this session, you’ll learn research-based techniques for visualizing data that you can apply right away, with software you already have.

You’ll learn how to:

• Tailor graphs for different audiences
• Avoid overused charts such as pies, bars, and lines
• Declutter visuals so that attention is focused on the takeaway messages
• Apply colors that are “Big A Accessible” and intuitive
• Add takeaway text that’s fast and easy to read

Dr. Carmen Simon is a cognitive neuroscientist who studies exactly what kind of information resonates and is remembered by audiences, particularly when presented on screen. Prepare to see a lot of conventional wisdom shattered as Dr. Simon explores how pacing, emotion, complexity, imagery, and so much more influences the effect our slides and presentations have on our audience’s attention and memory.

Key Takeaways:

• Why simplifying slides might have the opposite effect of what we think it does
• Why audiences need to be ”primed“
• How to use repetition to your advantage
• The power of metaphors

Font selection and typography settings are two of the most important decisions you make when designing a presentation. The choices you make can influence the tone of a presentation, impact readability, and affect the quality of your designs.

Led by the author of Guide to Cloud Fonts in Microsoft 365; Choosing fonts for PowerPoint templates, and Building PowerPoint Templates, this session will cover the essentials of fonts and typography in PowerPoint. You’ll learn which fonts work best and which ones to avoid. You’ll also learn how to tweak type formatting with PowerPoint’s native tools and time saving add-ins.

Key Takeaways:

• Considerations when choosing fonts
• Sourcing fonts, and the pros and cons of each type
• What you need to know about font embedding, variable fonts, and other gotchas
• Formatting type to increase readability

PowerPoint templates, while useful and essential, often lack the flexibility many designers and users need. To overcome these limitations, the creative use of layouts and master elements is essential for maximizing the capabilities of your templates.

This session will explore innovative strategies to extend the functionality of PowerPoint templates. You’ll learn how to use placeholders in unconventional ways to create dynamic, customizable elements such as movable graphics, lines, and logos. Additionally, we will cover techniques for adding color overlays, designing headers with integrated underlines, and understanding the behavior of different picture placeholders.

Topics Covered:

• Creating movable lines at the slide level
• Designing movable logos that can appear above images
• Implementing color blocks that layer above and below content
• Using icon placeholders effectively

Putting together a great presentation is all about getting the details right. And sometimes you may need a little help to raise the bar from adequate to awesome. Jole Simmons will showcase tons of resources you can use to perfect your presentations, including native PowerPoint features, add-ins, stock photo resources, and places to find animation inspiration.

Key Takeaways:

• Must-have plug-ins
• Building your resource library with books, websites, downloads, and more
• Easy-to-use utilities every presentation designer should know

When designing presentations under deadline, knowing how to deal with dense content can be the difference between getting it done on time and budget, versus sinking hours into endless rounds of revisions. In this session, Paris Sims will leverage his experience designing business pitches for some of the largest brands in the world and share his secrets for spinning straw into presentation gold. If you’ve ever felt as though having to cram in large amounts of content has held you back from designing at your best, then this session is for you.

Key Takeaways:

• How to break down slides into digestible bites of information
• How to identify content that hurts your presentation and to deal with it
• How to design not with just your eyes, but your ears.
• Cut production and proofreading time in half by knowing what to design versus what not to design
• How to ask the right design questions for the right design results

Google Slides has become a go-to tool for many businesses, but if you’re used to PowerPoint or Keynote, it can feel overwhelming when a client or your boss demands you use it for your next big presentation. In this session, we’ll help you navigate that shift with confidence. You’ll discover the essential skills needed to excel in Google Slides and learn how to harness its real-time collaboration features to your advantage. Whether you’re new to the platform or want to sharpen your skills, this session will give you the tools to make any presentation shine.

Key Takeaways:

• Mastering the interface: Key differences from PowerPoint
• Managing real-time collaboration and avoiding overwrite chaos
• The data dilemma: Generating graphs & safeguarding data
• Hidden tools, tips, and tricks that will delight you