Convey hard data without weighing down - Microsoft Office Productivity

In today’s competitive market, you need to deliver presentations your audience can understand — and then remember — after you leave the meeting room. It’s easy to pack a presentation with numerical data in an effort to get it all in, but if you clutter your slides with words and numbers, your point and your audience are lost. You need a method to get your data-driven message across with high-impact visuals. We’ve designed a technique to create borderless column or bar charts that deliver both data and a visual punch.

Plant the seed
Your background image is the key to creating a washout chart. For this technique, you’ll format your background image once and then make a copy of the background image. You’ll then wash out the copy for use in your chart.

Tip: In nearly every presentation you design, you should start with a subtle background image. When washing out a chart, be vigilant about subtleness, and also select a background image that uses dark colors.

Dig in to slide creation
Once you choose a background image, you’re ready to create your slide and basic chart.

To create your chart slide:

1. Create a blank slide.
2. Insert your background image by selecting Insert Picture From File, and then navigating to and selecting the image. Click Insert.
3. Resize the image using the sizing handles so that it covers the entire slide background.
4. Insert a text box by selecting Insert Text Box, and then add a title for the slide. Remember to use font colors that contrast with the background and use a font no smaller than 36 pt.
5. Arrange any text boxes with chart placement in mind.

Because the background tells so much of your slide’s story, avoid using additional images. If you must include a company logo, limit its size.

Insert and format your chart
The next step is to insert and format the chart. Begin with inserting a basic chart.

To create a basic chart:

1. Select Insert Chart to insert a Column chart and open a basic Presentation Datasheet.
2. Enter your data in the datasheet’s columns and rows.
3. Because wider columns look better with this technique, we used only one variable, as shown in Figure B. To remove a variable, right-click on the column or row header and choose Cut from the shortcut menu.
4. Click on your slide somewhere outside of the chart area to deactivate the chart. Size and position the chart on the slide as desired.

Look over your chart now and compare how the text color contrasts with the areas on the background it covers. Also determine if you wish to add custom titles. You can make those changes and more when you customize your chart.

To customize a chart to prepare it for the washout technique:

1. Double-click on the chart to edit it.
2. To change the axis font, right-click on the x- or y-axis and choose Format Axis.
3. On the Font tab, select a Font color and a Background color from the Color and Background dropdown lists. We chose White and Transparent, respectively. Repeat steps 2 and 3 for the other axis.
4. If your chart is simple, such as ours, and thus you don’t need a legend, remove it to streamline the chart by right-clicking on the legend and choosing Clear.
5. Right-click in the Chart Area and choose Chart Options if you wish to add titles. Figure C illustrates the Chart Area.
6. Enter text in the appropriate text boxes on the Titles tab. Click OK, and then right-click on the title and choose Format Axis Title to format the font, if desired.
7. If you wish to remove the gridlines as we did for our example chart, right-click on a gridline and choose Clear from the shortcut menu.
8. To format the column type so that you can wash it out, right-click on the Chart Area and choose Chart Type from the shortcut menu. Choose Clustered Columns from the Chart Sub-type section of the Standard Types tab. Click OK.
9. To change the spacing between each column, right-click on a column and choose Format Data Series from the shortcut menu. On the Options tab, change the gap width, as desired. We chose 50.

Wash out your columns
Now that you’ve finished with the necessary and aesthetic chart customization, you’re ready for washout magic. To save time and repetitive steps, begin by copying the original background image onto a new blank slide. You can delete this slide later.

To create and format the washout image:

1. Right-click on the background image and choose Copy.
2. Select Insert New Slide and choose Blank from the Slide Layout pane. (In 2000, select Blank in the New Slide dialog box and click OK.)
3. Right-click on the new slide and choose Paste.
4. On the Picture toolbar, click the Color button and select Washout (choose Image Control Watermark in 2000), as shown in Figure E.
5. Use the corresponding icons on the Picture toolbar to increase or decrease the Brightness and Contrast, as desired.

Now that you’ve finished formatting the washout image, you’ll copy it back to the original slide and crop it to the columns.

To create custom borderless columns with the washout image:

1. Right-click on the washout image on the temporary slide (be sure to select the image, not just the slide) and choose Copy.
2. Right-click on the original slide and choose Paste.
3. Move the image so that it exactly covers your original background image.
4. Activate the Picture toolbar and click the Crop button.
5. Use the cropping handles to crop the graphic to just larger than the original bar. For more precise placement, press and hold the [Alt] key while you drag a cropping handle.
6. Repeat steps 1 through 5 for each column.

You can use this technique regardless of your slide’s topic, but it’s easiest to implement when you use a bar or column chart.

Related Courses

• 4007 Creating Effective Presentations Using Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003
• PowerPoint 2007 - Level 1
• PowerPoint 2007 - Level 2
• PowerPoint 2007 New Features

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