Design Better PowerPoint

Design Better PowerPoint
Word Count:
573
Summary:
Designing better PowerPoint can help corporate communication.

Keywords:
powerpoint, design, branding, slides, colors, typography 

Article Body:
In my line of work, I find myself constantly producing PowerPoint presentations. Sometimes these are just individual slides (like a diagram or case study), sometimes they are templates, and sometimes they are whole, individual presentations. Most of my PowerPoint work is completed at my day job where I am an in-house designer, but my freelancing alter ego occasionally comes across a client needing some presentational pick-up. Over the years, I have built and edited hundreds of PowerPoint files.
I know a lot of people think PowerPoint is the devil incarnate, but in the corporate world, it is an ubiquitous evil. To shake some of the negative stereotypes, I apply traditional design principals to make my company and clients look better than the competition.
We go to 120 trade shows a year, and we present at every single one. We also use Macromedia's Breeze for hundreds of online demos. Our PowerPoint is often the first thing a potential customer will see from us, so it is critical (and easy) to make a good impression before they even receive a brochure.
PowerPoint is used by nearly sales guy on the planet, with a whole industry of accessories built around the presentation guru / road warrior concept. It is employed for downloadable or live web demos, and it is even used (or abused, depending on your point of view) to pass along copy, concepts and notes between internal team members. With this volume of use, PowerPoint slide design becomes just another facet of a company’s identity program.
From Chuck’s Neighborhood PeeCee Warehouse to Apple Computer, the local cafe with the amazing bagels to Starbucks Coffee, every business benefits from a unique identity, a look and feel that separates them from competition. The company logo is only a small part. Corporate colors, type treatments, illustration styles and repeated graphic elements are all parts of the greater whole. This identity is carried through to stationary, trade show graphics, packaging, advertising and yes, PowerPoint.
The software has become so ubiquitous that I consider it part of a greater paradigm shift in mainstream communication. The only problem is that this evolution is hindering communication. Like text messaging or 200-pixel banner ads, the information is compressed to a set of key buzzwords, crippling the message by stripping the skeleton of any meat. Bullet points become rapid-fire metadata. I give you the words "purple" and "fish" -- you figure out what I am trying to say.
* Leverage your existing technology
* Realize rapid ROI
* Streamlined implementation
Is about as meaningful as:
* Parsed cabbage flux capacitor
* Disco glitter manifestation
* Expressive giraffe BLT
Maybe a hundred years ago those phrases denoted something, but by sheer repetition and abuse, the PowerPoint generation has crushed the meaning like 200,000 people at a Stones concert trampling through a flower garden.
In the same way a good logo supports a successful identity program, good PowerPoint transcends half-assed bullet points and reinforces the speaker -- their personality, message and purpose. It doesn't recycle the same, tired messaging over and over. Not only does it look awesome, good PowerPoint hammers home the presenter's message with unique phrasing, interesting design elements and a certain disregard for the status quo bullshit buzz-speak.
All the flashy backgrounds, painstaking animations and intense clipart research are for nothing if the message has been gutted from the shell. So while I "design" PowerPoint, I design for the audience because I am focused on how they will react to the information.

Create Icons for Vista Applications with Ease

Create Icons for Vista Applications with Ease
Word Count:
341
Summary:
Icon Lover is an editor for creation of animated and static icons and cursors. It's ideal for creating design of Vista applications and can transfer 16-bit DLLs to 32-bit ones for use on Vista.

Keywords:
icons,editor,icon editor,creation,animated,vista,design

Article Body:
Icon Lover is a powerful editor for creation and editing animated and static icons and cursors. With this editor, you can easily create and modify icons of any size and color as well as manage icon libraries and image lists. It also allows you to create images with multiple layers. In addition to the classic set of drawing instruments, Icon Lover has the Effects Studio enabling you to use such visual effects as opacity, drop shadow and many others. Moreover, you can simultaneously apply effects to a great number of icons. It also supports most of the existing image formats and can convert from any to any of them, so it's easy to create icons from images. With these features, Icon Lover is at its best for nice, smooth icons for Vista.
Another advantage of Icon lover is that it can solve the problem, most of the companies face while creating design for Vista applications. Vista doesn't support 16-bit DLLs anymore. This means that all 16-bit DLL and ICL files are no longer useful for uploading icons to API. Well, you can't change Vista's inner architecture, but you can use Icon Lover to transform 16-bit DLLs to 32-bit ones. The program works smoothly with both 16-bit and 32-bit DLLs and can convert them from one to another. Now your old DLLs can be converted and applied to run on Vista and vice-versa - 32-bit DLLs can be transferred to 16-bit ones for use on another OS.
Icon Lover has been created by graphic designers for graphic designers and thus, all much-requested functions are delivered in a friendly interface. With this editor, your work will be as convenient as never before. What's more, in case you don't have time to go through the whole editing process, you can simply use Icon Lover to download icons from the Internet, and get a ready-made solution. Use Icon Lover to create the finest icons for apps and sites to make them very attractive. Please, visit http://www.aha-soft.com/iconlover/index.htm for a free trial.