You are sending a sales proposal to a new prospect. Should you email a PPTX file or a PDF?  Here are the benefits of sharing a PDF: 1. Lowers the file size. Converting your PowerPoint to PDF saves a lot of space. It is easier and faster to email. Your client will surely email the proposal to many others within her organization. Make it easy for her. How much compression is possible? I recently compressed a 20 MB PPTX file to a 1.2 MB PDF file. That's a reduction of 18.8 MB! 2. Opens on all devices. Your client (or her colleagues) might open your sales proposal on their mobile, tablet or laptop. They could load it onto Google Drive and open straight from there. PDF will work better on all OS, devices and platforms. 3. Preserves special fonts . Converting your PowerPoint to PDF preserves all the special fonts used. If you email your PPTX file and you forget to embed the special fonts, the client's computer will replace those fonts with some other font and totally screw ...

I have analyzed 125 ads published in the last 3 years in various newspapers. Why? Newspaper ads are designed by professional designers who get paid for doing this. They put out their best designs in newspapers to help their clients sell more stuff. So analyzing these ads can teach us a lot about good design. You can apply these secrets to design better presentations, posters and leaflets. In this post (Part 1) we will talk about colours. HOW TO USE COLOUR IN DESIGN? Colour is perhaps the most critical design element. Use it well and you create harmony which appeals to the eye. Use it badly and you have chaos and you'll repel your audience. When you design a presentation or a leaflet you have to decide on many things around colour. Make sure you decide consciously. How many colours do I use? How do I connect colours to create harmony and balance? Which colours go well together? (colour combinations) What should be my background colour? (most of your text will come over it)...

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, is a famous entrepreneur. His company Tesla is harnessing the power of the sun to run cars and homes. His company SpaceX plans to colonize Mars. He sold his previous company PayPal to eBay for $1.5 Billion. Every presentation he makes is watched closely by millions. So how does this rock star entrepreneur start his product launch presentation?  I have analyzed four of his major product launch presentations. Tesla Powerwall (solar battery) Tesla Model 3 car Tesla solar roof SpaceX mars mission Elon Musk started each product launch presentation the same way. He started with WHY, not with WHAT Elon Musk said this when he launched Tesla Model 3. "Welcome everyone to the Model 3 unveil. We have an amazing product to show you tonight. I think you gonna be blown away. And... I want to preface this with... Why are we doing this? Why does Tesla exist? Why are we making electric cars? Why does it matter?" He answered...

PowerPoint has a new feature called 'PowerPoint Picture Presentation' . When you save your presentation as a picture presentation, PowerPoint converts all your slides into pictures. All the elements on a slide are converted into a single image. Where is it? File --> Save As --> Choose a folder --> Save as type --> PowerPoint Picture Presentation. You can save your existing presentation as a picture presentation. Make sure you keep a copy of your original, as you cannot edit the picture presentation. The format of the new presentation is still .pptx When do you need it? To r educe the size of your presentation . The file size will come down significantly. To protect your special fonts. If you have used special fonts, converting your presentation into a picture presentation will preserve everything perfectly. What do you lose? Animations. Slide transitions remain intact but all the animations on a slide go away. That is because all the elemen...

Shahrukh Khan, one of the most popular actors of India, gave a TED talk at Vancouver. While the talk sounded too formal and rehearsed, it still has a lot of positives and lessons for presenters. Structure and logic of his talk He has broken the talk into 5 parts and it moves chronologically. Introduction (1 minute 30 seconds) Part 1 - Early life in Delhi (3 minutes) Part 2 - Life in Mumbai (2 minutes) Part 3 - The impact of internet on his life and on humanity (4 minutes) Conclusion and main message (7 minutes) His topic was 'The Future of Humanity' and he gave all the messages related to that in the last 7 minutes of his talk. Why did he do that? Why all the story telling for the first 10 minutes? How do you tell someone what will the future look like? How do you tell someone how to conduct themselves in the future? Shahrukh first establishes an alignment. He explains his own life and what he has seen. What has he gone through in the last 50 years and how...