Just insert a photo or other visual content on a slide and a “Design Ideas” window will appear on the right side of the editor.
The 8 suggestions Designer offers are especially valuable because they help presenters avoid the repetitive corporate template look and instead mix and match between modern, elegant design concepts with a variety of styles. With Designer though, a surprisingly high percentage of its suggestions were effective-on average about 5-6 of its 8 suggestions were usable without any tweaking, even when sampling different photos with varying dimensions. Over the years I’ve used “auto-generation” tools on many platforms and most of the time I found the suggested result required so much tweaking that it was easier to simply do it myself from the beginning. Simply put, Designer automatically generates a sample design concept for your slide as soon as you insert content (such as a photo) into it. Ranking these new features on ease of use, Designer tops the list.
These features have helped convince me this classic presentation platform can still serve forward-thinking presenters and I’m excited to share a few reasons why-continue on to see for yourself! Recently though, my feelings on using PowerPoint have shifted from a perspective of begrudgingly to one of interested and possibly even excited- specifically because of 3 new features Microsoft has debuted for its Office 365 subscribers: Designer, Morph and Zoom.ĭespite the names-which sound a bit like a long-lost disco group-the features deliver advanced capabilities to a platform that has seemingly remained stagnant for many years.ĭesigner allows presenters to quickly generate high-impact, professional-looking slides while Morph and Zoom improve continuation between slides-allowing the audience to better track the point of a presenter’s PowerPoint. I’ve been critical of PowerPoint in the past because its linear structure made it difficult for presenters to communicate context and avoid losing the audience in a sea of endless slides.