Presentations and PowerPoint | Blog

4 questions for CEO Achim Sztuka

4 questions for CEO Achim Sztuka.

Is PowerPoint really past its prime? An international study.

Is PowerPoint really past its prime? An international study. The ‘Business Presentations 2017 – Practice, Efficiency and Success’ international study launched by Strategy Compass came to a close in November. With over 500 participants from German and American companies, it represents a cross-section of thinkers, predominantly managers, from companies with more than 1,000 staff.

PowerPoint format 4:3 vs. 16:9. The aspect ratio issue reloaded.

Nine questions to help you decide.

A presentation workshop of a different kind in Mauritius

For the last 3 years, we at Strategy Compass have been supporting EAST, a non-profit organisation dedicated to developing education, health and entrepreneurship in Africa. At the heart of its activities is the annual “eLearning Africa” conference, which brings together people from all over Africa (and beyond) who can and want to bring about change.

How corporate design changes impact on PowerPoint

The time has come. A new corporate design has been created. Your brand is refreshing itself and taking the next step towards a successful future. It’s time for a new outfit, for elegant haute couture. The project is going well, and management is happy. Until… you guessed it, staff become outraged after suddenly discovering they need to rework all existing presentations in order to transfer them to the new master.

Creating compelling presentations using the OSCAR Principle

What is it that actually makes a presentation compelling? We already asked ourselves this question many years ago (and continue to ask it). It essentially comes down to just a few criteria, which we’ve summarized into what we call the OSCAR Principle. If your presentation meets these five criteria, it’s likely to receive an OSCAR nomination – and get you the desired results.

How to embed fonts in PowerPoint

Sometimes one just has to add an ‘NA’. NA? Not applicable? Not quite. Do you remember WYSIWYG ‒ what you see is what you get? When creating a presentation on your PC you can immediately see what it looks like. Yet the whole thing can look completely different when you open your presentation on a different PC. Because then a WYSIWYG quickly becomes a WYSINAWYG ... namely “What you see is not always what you get”.

4:3 or 16:9? The right aspect ratio in PowerPoint

In the good old days, our slides came in a 4:3 format. Thanks to technical progress, the 16:9 format is becoming more and more appropriate. PowerPoint realized this long ago, and has been offering us both the 4:3 and the 16:9 formats, in addition to every other customized format we might want. This leaves us with difficult choices.

Orientation 3: Presenter View in PowerPoint

This is now the third blog entry on the subject of orientation. Because orientation really is important! We’re focusing again on your security and orientation as the person standing up front and speaking. The more authoritative, confident and relaxed you appear, the more credible and interesting you will come across.

Orientierung durch die Referentenansicht

At a glance: which visualization for which message?

There are numerous ways to illustrate your messages in PowerPoint graphically. To help you find the right one quickly and easily, we’ve summarized various visualization types with hints for their use:

Welche Visualisierung für welche Aussage

Tidying up: layout grids and drawing guides in PowerPoint

For your presentation to appear harmonious and professional, all elements should be properly aligned. Not just on one slide, but across all slides in the presentation. There are two things that make this easier: layout grids and PowerPoint guides.

Masters, Layouts, Slides, etc. – getting it right in PowerPoint

PowerPoint presentations are the standard in business communication. But PowerPoint is often used sloppily, even in the world’s leading companies. Tens of thousands of employees are not using the software properly, creating huge amounts of additional work. And it’s quite likely that the results don’t have much in common with corporate design guidelines, either. In fact, using PowerPoint correctly in your company is not very difficult. This blog post explains how to structure a professional PowerPoint master, and what to look out for when using it.