Less is More

Quick reference

• 00:05 To me, PowerPoint animations are an important tool that help you to deliver
• 00:08 an effective presentation to your audience.
• 00:11 And that's whether, it's by an individual viewing slides in your presentation by
• 00:15 themself, without a live speaker.
• 00:17 Or whether they're part of a number of people in the audience with
• 00:19 a live speaker.
• 00:21 This video is about a very important animation fact, and
• 00:25 that is that less is more.
• 00:27 That's one of a number of videos that relate to animation,
• 00:31 including specifics of adding, changing, deleting animations in the animation pane.
• 00:37 The presentation that you're viewing now is available for
• 00:40 download as part of this module.
• 00:42 And I'd encourage you to have a look at the various slides to see the animations
• 00:45 that have been applied.
• 00:46 If we look at the first slide, we can see that there's a number of objects on
• 00:50 the slide, and graphics, and text boxes, and it looks quite cluttered, however,
• 00:55 let's click on the Animations tab and the Animation Pane,
• 01:02 we can see that all of the objects on the slide are indeed animated.
• 01:07 Again, how these animations were created is the subject of other videos.
• 01:11 But let's go to slide show mode by pressing F5 on the keyboard, and
• 01:15 see how these animations play.
• 01:17 Notice that all of the objects except for the title, Why We Animate,
• 01:21 are indeed hidden.
• 01:22 When I press Enter on the keyboard, the next animation fires,
• 01:26 the title text exits, and the title box that contains the text to remove clutter,
• 01:31 appears with an entrance animation.
• 01:34 Hit Enter again, and that text disappears with an exit animation, and
• 01:39 a new text box that contains the text reveal items in stages appears.
• 01:45 And that's really the power of animation.
• 01:47 Bringing the in objects on a slide exactly when we need them to reduce clutter.
• 01:52 So let's continue to go through the slides, and I'll speak to as though I'm
• 01:56 presenting it to an audience with a few indispersed comments.
• 02:00 So again, I'll hit Enter on the keyboard to fire the next animation.
• 02:04 The various meeting types are face to face, informal, or online.
• 02:10 I'll press Enter again on the keyboard.
• 02:12 Animations allow us to focus attention to specific locations on the slide.
• 02:18 Keep your eyes on the word online.
• 02:20 When I press Enter, an emphasis animation is added,
• 02:24 which underlines the word, or if that's too subtle,
• 02:27 I can add a shape in the form of an arrow within entrance animation of.
• 02:32 So again, on this slide, we can see that the animations break the story that
• 02:36 our slides supports the specific chunks that we can speak about.
• 02:40 And it reduces clutter and focuses attention on specific parts of the slide.
• 02:45 Please note that the animations that you will
• 02:48 add depend on the type of presentation you're constructing.
• 02:51 For example, a presentation self delivered
• 02:53 by someone is where the presentation effectively delivers itself.
• 02:58 The presenter or the designer who developed the presentation may have left
• 03:02 a voice over prepared beforehand, or
• 03:05 may deliver the presentation remotely over the Internet via an online broadcast.
• 03:10 And that's effectively the kind of presentation you're watching now.
• 03:13 You can't see me wave my arms around, or point to anything on the slide, so
• 03:17 the animations will be more dynamic and
• 03:18 exciting, to keep the audience's attention.
• 03:22 And you'll need a certain amount of emphasis animation to direct the audience
• 03:25 attention to particular locations on the slide.
• 03:28 In a live presentation in this graphic, the gentleman,
• 03:32 even though he's presenting with a flip chart, he could be using
• 03:36 a presentation on a television, or on a large screen, like in a conference.
• 03:40 In this case, it's the person who is the animated interface in the presentation.
• 03:45 So the animations have need to be more subtle, so
• 03:47 that they don't distract from the person presenting.
• 03:50 The person could also point to locations on the slide, and
• 03:53 direct the audience's attention to specific locations on those slides.
• 03:58 So let's look at this concept by viewing two slides.
• 04:01 In this slide, if I was presenting it live, I would introduce each line of text
• 04:06 on mouse click, or by clicking Enter on the keyboard.
• 04:09 That way, I've got total control,
• 04:10 over which element is introduced when within the presentation.
• 04:14 For a self-delivered presentation,
• 04:16 I'd probably bring all of the text in together.
• 04:19 With an entrance animation, and then, use an emphasis animation to brush on a color,
• 04:23 as I speak about each particular item.
• 04:26 Now, the most important concept to learn from this sequence of animation
• 04:30 objects on the slides, is that less is more.
• 04:33 Animation is movement, and it attracts attention.
• 04:37 Dumb Pauly, it can be very distracting.
• 04:40 We can understand that by looking at a particular slide that I've constructed.
• 04:44 On this slide, I want the audience to focus on the word customers.
• 04:48 I've added a motion path animation, and that makes the word move downward, and
• 04:52 then, backward with an auto reverse.
• 04:55 Again, please download the presentation to view the specific animation that
• 04:58 was added.
• 05:00 And the details of constructing the various animations are contained in other
• 05:03 videos.
• 05:04 When the word customers moves,
• 05:06 it has the effect of focusing your attention on that word.
• 05:09 However, if I use the same animation on the four other words, which are costs,
• 05:14 sales, marketing, and reputation, it diverts your attention to those words, and
• 05:19 distracts from looking at the word that I want you to focus on.
• 05:22 So in summary, animations allow you to break down complex topics into chunks, and
• 05:27 that helps your audience to understand your message.
• 05:30 They allow you to focus the audience attention to a particular area
• 05:34 on your slide.
• 05:35 But most importantly, less is more.
• 05:38 So keep working at understanding animations, and
• 05:40 remember the other videos available, and this presentation available for download.

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