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About this lesson
Have the confidence to know exactly what to animate without driving your audience crazy.
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Exercise files
Download the PowerPoint presentation used in the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.
Less is More.pptx650.8 KB
Quick reference
Less is More
‘Less is more’: How less animation can have more impact.
When to use
When animating a presentation.
Instructions
- Before you start to animate a presentation, consider this about the two main types of PowerPoint presentation:
- A kiosk presentation can be relatively dynamic, particularly in the use of emphasis animations.
- A presentation delivered live by a speaker should have subtler animations so that the presentation doesn’t ‘dominate’ or ‘drown out’ the speaker.
- Animation should be employed to break down a complex topic into its constituent parts and bring them in one-by-one to support your story and enhance the audience’s understanding.
Also note:
You should ensure the animation supports the story being told and that it doesn’t interfere with yourself or someone else who is the live presenter.
You can’t point manually to an object on the screen in a kiosk presentation unless you are presenting it yourself to an audience. Therefore, emphasis animations are essential to highlight particular parts of the slide.
Login to download- 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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