The Easy Way To Make Your PPTs Suck Less

I had to make a ppt for something today. I chose the old and faithful MS-Powerpoint (I'm not quite the Prezi guy). I started off the usual route of putting all the content in my mind onto the slides. I tried to follow the best practice of not putting too much content in one slide and maintaining a logical flow. Then, I chose a 'Slide Design' from the standard powerpoint menu. After that I put some font styles here and there. And Hey! I had got a ppt for myself! It was all good, except that it was boring. Boring as in "Boooooring". This must be the millionth ppt made with this design! In fact, I actually put myself to sleep after watching the slide show. There had to be another way!

So, I decided to dump the ppt and start afresh. I thought that having images as background would be a cool idea. But only high-res images would do, otherwise the slides would look pretty pathetic. A small search for high-res free stock photos lead me to this super-cool link : Stock Photos That Don't Suck

Each of those pages contain some very awesome pics. So I redesigned my ppt by searching for appropriate photos and experimenting with them. Finding the perfect photos took a decent amount of time but patience was the key in unearthing this treasure trove.

Here are the results of both the efforts. I have replaced the actual content for a much more interesting (and healthy :P ) content. Hope you enjoy/learn. Let me know your feedback. And do share your quick ppt tips in the comments below!

The Earlier Version:

Earlier Banana from Abhiroop Bhatnagar

The Later Version:

Later Banana from Abhiroop Bhatnagar

Additional Notes:
resonate.duarte.com : This is an excellent resource which tells not only about how to make effective ppts but how to have effective communications in general. Thanks to Vedant for sharing it.