Lesson 5.

1: Slide Design and Elements,

and Animation and Media

Presentation graphics software is intended primarily for the business user, for
creating slideshow presentations, overhead transparencies, reports, portfolios,
and training materials. Presentation graphics software uses graphics,
animation, sound, and data or information to make visual presentations.
Presentation graphics are much fancier and more complicated than are
analytical graphics. Pages in presentation software are often referred to as
slides, and visual presentations are commonly called slide shows. They can
consist, however, not only of 35-mm slides but also of paper copies, overhead
transparencies, video, animation, and sound. Completed presentations are
frequently published in multiple formats, which may include print, the web, and
electronic files.
Most often, presentation projects are used in live sessions. They are commonly
projected onto large screens or printed on overhead transparencies. The slides
may be distributed in printed form as handouts to accompany the live
presentation. Slides are generally intended to be followed in an ordered
sequence, although some presentations may utilize interactive forms of
navigation. More and more of this software now has the ability to export to
HTML for posting presentations on the web.
You may already be accustomed to seeing presentation graphics because
many college instructors now use such software to accompany their lectures.
Well-known presentation graphics packages include Microsoft PowerPoint,
Corel Presentations, OpenOffice Impress, Apple Keynote, Google Slides,
Prezi, and SlideShare.
Presentation graphics packages often come with slide sorters, which group
together a dozen or so slides in miniature (Figure 1). The person making the
presentation can use a mouse or a keyboard to bring the slides up for viewing
or even start a self-running electronic slide show. You can also use a projection
system from the computer itself.
 Tabs with
command groups

Outline View helps you

organize the content of
your material in standard
outline form.

Slide View shows you what

a single slide looks like.

Slide Sorter View displays

all the slides as miniatures.

Notes Page View shows a

small version of the slide
plus the notes you will be
using as speaker notes.

Figure 1. Microsoft PowerPoint helps you prepare and make visual presentations.

PowerPoint provides three types of movements: Entrance, emphasis, and exit

of elements on a slide itself are controlled by what PowerPoint calls Custom
Animations. Transitions are movements between slides. These can be
animated in a variety of ways. Custom animation can be used to create small
story boards by animating pictures to enter, exit, or move. Speech bubbles with
edited text can be set on and off to create speech.

Animations can be applied to slide

elements for improved visualization

Transitions can be applied to slides

themselves to give animations when
proceeding to another slide.

Figure 2. Animations and Transitions can be done in Microsoft PowerPoint by going to their
respective tabs.

Just as word processing programs offer templates for faxes, business letters,
and the like, presentation graphics programs offer templates to help you
organize your presentation, whether it’s for a roomful of people or over the
internet. Templates are of two types: design and content.
• Design templates: These offer formats, layouts, background patterns,
and color schemes that can apply to general forms of content material.
• Content templates: These offer formats for specific subjects. For
instance, PowerPoint offers templates for “Selling Your Ideas,”
“Facilitating a Meeting,” and “Motivating a Team.”
 Slide designs can be
found in the Design tab.

Content templates are offered to

get you started on your presentation

Figure 3. Microsoft PowerPoint offers slide designs and templates.

Dressing Up Your Presentation

Presentation software makes it easy to dress up each visual page (“slide”) with
artwork by pulling in (“dragging and dropping”) clip art from other sources.
Although presentations may make use of some basic analytical graphics–bar,
line, and pie charts–they generally use much more sophisticated elements. For
instance, they may display different textures (speckled, solid, cross-hatched),
color, and three-dimensionality. In addition, you can add sound clips, special
visual effects (such as blinking text), animation, and video clips. (You can, in
fact, drag and drop art and other enhancements into desktop-publishing, word
processing or other standard PC applications)