Less is more

Over the weekend I was trying to put together a PowerPoint presentation for one of the conference's I'm speaking at in March and today was the day we were having a Skype meeting to firm up the details. My colleague wanted the 'less is more' approach, "Just 3 slides," he said.

I don't know about you, but for me PowerPoint used to be very simple. You got a few words, a couple of graphics and you got them to tastefully appear on the screen when you wanted.

This weekend I discovered a whole new world of PowerPoint that comes in the form of 'SmartArt', essentially supposed to make the job of 'less is more' a whole lot easier. Well yes, as long as you don't want to change shapes, colours, connectors or anything else, you'll be fine.

Many, many hours later I managed to get 3, rather good, fully animated, colour co-ordinated slides that, though I say so myself, look pretty damn professional.

At today's Skype meeting my colleague said, "I just wonder if we couldn't add this other slide I have? It's fully animated and should be fine. The colours are slightly different though, so perhaps you'll play with it and get it to fit?"

Famous last words, 'should be fine',  'colours are slightly different' and 'get it to fit'. I should've known better! A bleeping few hours later and I managed to get the bleeping slide to co-ordinate with the rest of the bleeping presentation.

Less is more? Right... well it might look like that to you, but I know different.