By itself, PowerPoint and Keynote are solid presentation tools. In the hands of almost any presenter, though, they become communication nightmares. Massive amounts of text abound, graphics are lacking and animations are WAY overused.

After attending even one presentation where the presenter reads the copious slides and does nothing else, one might ask “What can we do to stop the pain”? It would start with a better understanding of presentations - Garr Reynold’s book, Presentation Zen, is the best place to start in that area. At only $20, this is one of the best books you’ll ever buy.

From a tool standpoint, though, one potential solution to the problem is InDesign. Traditionally, InDesign is a page layout tool. But, used in the right way (and in partnership with Adobe Reader), it can create some great presentations.

Why Use InDesign as a Presentation Tool?

By itself, InDesign won’t solve presentation problems. But, having better graphics and slide layouts do help. The following are the reasons I like to create most of my presentations in InDesign.

• InDesign’s Master Pages Are More Flexible: InDesign allows for easier management of master pages, as well as more elegant slide customization of master page items.
• InDesign Integrates with Illustrator and Photoshop: I use a lot of graphics in my presenations. The ability to directly insert Photoshop and Illustrator files or copy/paste around makes things significantly faster.
• InDesign’s Graphic Tools Rock: InDesign isn’t the industry leader in page layout for nothing. Its tools for text, images and effects are much more flexbily and powerful than PowerPoint. It also supports styles and other features that allow me to more quickly create and update my slides.
• It Keeps People Out of the Presentation: This could be good or bad depending on your point of view. PowerPoint’s mass appeal and use has turned anyone and everyone into presentation creators. By moving it to InDesign, I can ensure some level of quality control on the presentations I create. The one downside is that I have to spend a significant amount of energy on working with people to understand why they can’t do the final work in PowerPoint. In many cases, they can still create it in PowerPoint, but I then transition it over to InDesign to ensure proper formatting, amounts of text, graphics, etc.

How to Use InDesign to Create Presentations?

This part is suprisingly simple. When opening InDesign, create a new document that has the same dimensions as a PowerPoint, 10 in x 7.5 in.

After the document is created, you can insert new pages and add text, background colors, etc. as if you were creating any other document. Each new page will be a new slide in your presentation.

When finished, export the document as a PDF.

How to Play the Presentation

Now that the presentation is in PDF, you can play it in Adobe Acrobat, or the free program, Adobe Reader. To do so, open the PDF and choose View > Full Screen Mode or press Ctrl (Cmd on a Mac) + L. Doing so sets the presentation to fill the screen. You can then use your mouse (clicking moves forward, right-clicking moves back) or the arrow keys (right key is forward, left key is back).

Another benefit to this method that I didn’t mention above is that it puts the presentation in a less editable form (PDF is more difficult to edit than PPTs, which are the format PowerPoint presentations are usually distributed in).

When InDesign Won’t Work

As with most nice solutions, there are times when this won’t work.

• Transitions are Critical: I can’t remember the last time I NEEDED to put a transition in my slides. In most cases, they should be suplements to speaking, not the main focus. And, if video or other items need to be included, they can be inserted into InDesign as well. Having said that, I’m sure others will find occasion to need PPT or Keynote transitions. If that is the case, InDesign probably isn’t the tool of choice.
• PowerPoint is the Foundation for Something Else: With PowerPoint becoming so popular, a lot of other programs are relying on PowerPoint as a basis for creating other things. For example, a program called Articulate allows you to create a presentation in PowerPoint and then quickly convert it to Flash, adding voice overs, etc.

So, in summary, InDesign is a great tool for creating presentations and in most cases can replace PowerPoint or Keynote. But, don’t forget that ultimately they are just tools and that basic presentation creation/delivery skills are even more important. I’ve seen some aweful slideshows that were part of decent presentations and some great slideshows that were part of terrible presentations.

Having a 2-monitor setup is becoming more and more common, especially with the dropping price of supporting hardware and the influx of LCD monitors. I have a 2 monitor setup at work and at home and they are an important part of my setup and workflow.

I also enjoy a nice desktop wallpaper. One thing I’ve had problems with, though, is when I set a wallpaper with dual monitors it repeats the same wallpaper on both screens. It would be nice if I could set separate wallpaper for each or even better, span a long pano-type image across both monitors.

I’d been struggling with this problem for a while - at least until I found a great, free tool, Display Fusion. The one downside is that it is for PC users only (it works on XP and Vista) - if you are on a Mac, feel free to post other solutions in the comments section of the post.

Display Fusion, which can be downloaded here, solves wallpaper problems with dual monitors and more. After installing, you can pull up the properties of Display Fusion to configure its two primary purposes - wallpaper display and shortcut keys.

Before I decided to keep and recommend the program, though, I wanted to make sure it wasn’t a computer resource hog. I have enough background processes as it is and needed this to be small. After running, I pulled up the Task Manager and reviewed its usage under various circumstances. On Windows Vista, it idles at around 800 KB of memory and spikes up to around 1.5 or 2 MB of memory. That’s lower than most other processes, even light ones, so running Display Fusion won’t tax your system!

Based on its robust, yet simple features, small impact on system resources and great price, I highly recommend Display Fusion.

Wallpaper Display

The tool provides several options for displaying different images on each monitor or to span one image across monitors. It adds a few nice features like stretch/ centering, shifting the background up/down and left/right to get it right where you want it and to access photos directly from Flickr.  The Flickr feature lets you search Flickr groups/people/text fields and easily display rotating images from the search results.

I tried several images with it and it worked flawlessly. Keep in mind that if you want to span a picture across both monitors you’ll need to find/adjust one to be more panoramic than usual. It will adjust it for you if needed, but if it isn’t meant to be very wide, it could end up distorting it.

Shortcut Keys

Display Fusion is worth downloading/installing based on its wallpaper features alone, so its added support for Shortcut Keys is a real treat.

The settings display about a dozen common actions you would want to perform with program windows between the two monitors, such as moving a window from one to the other, spanning a window across both, etc. You can assign a keyboard shortcut to the various actions. They worked very smoothly with very little, if any lag, between using the shortcut and seeing the windows move as requested. I don’t move things around a lot but this is definately a timesaver.

Simply put, the web has transformed the way people can learn and share information. The change in just the last few years since I’ve graduated from formal learning has been incredible. I won’t go into Web 2.0 or any of the other buzzwords out there right now.

Instead, I’d like to share a few things that I’ve learned recently on the web - and encourage you to pick a topic, any topic and learn more about it. The return (learning all about a new topic, allowing you to grow personally, professionally, spiritually, etc.) is often MUCH greater than the investment (a computer, web connection and some time).

All told, I read around a 12-15 blogs every day. It may seem like a lot, but the 30-60 minutes invested every day teaches me as much as I learned inan entire day when in college (no disrespect to my school - it too was invaluable - but the information provided by industry leaders on reputable blogs can’t be beat).

Over the last year or so, I’ve learned a lot from the web, including:

Photography

I’ve always been interested in photography. The results of combining a creative vision and a single moment is an exhilarating process. My wife was already a fairly accomplished photographer and earlier this year, after several years of talking about it, we decided to start a small photography studio, Professional Snapshots. In order to feel competent in this new venture and to support my wife, I started reading just about any blog I could.

In a fairly short amount of time I was able to learn an incredible amount about the technical aspects of a camera, lighting, composition and more. I was also able to find vast amounts of examples and inspiration.

This learning, combined with some good-old-fashioned practice, has taken me a long way. You can check out my other blog about photography and some of our work, here, here and here. I took the photo at the top of this post - it is one of my personal favorites - you can click on it for a much larger view.

If you are intesreted in learning more about photography, or as a resource to some great examples of how to put together information on a topic, you can check out some of my favorite photography blogs:

• Strobist: One of the most heavily visited photography sites on the web. Featuring information on lighting, at the time of this potsing, it receives several hundred thousand visitors a month.
• ScottKelby.com: Great general resource. As an author of a ton of best selling books, Scott has written an incredible amount of information on photography. I highly recommend his books, and his blog.
• Chase Jarvis: This Seattle-based photographer helped defind what it means to share knowledge with a community. He lets you inside his black box, providing a unique look of the behind-the-scenes activities of a accomplished photographer.
• Photodoto
• Digital Photogaphy School
• Digital Pro Talk

Software

My wife is jealous of our computer. I’ve got to admit, it probably gets more attention than it should. I’ll also admit it. My name is Brian and I’m addicted to software. It’s a critical part to my job as a designer-technology-communications person (I tend to wear a lot of different hats). As a result, I read several blogs and do consistent research on forums for lots of software programs. Doing so helps me stay up to date on all the different programs I use. Some of them are InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver, Lightroom, Microsoft Office Suite, SnagIt and Captivate.

Some of my favorite technology blogs/podcasts are:

• InDesignSecrets
• PhotoshopUserTv
• LightroomKillerTips

GeoCaching

GeoCaching is the topic that prompted this post. Here’s how it came about. I was researching various GPS Receivers for use in photography (to record where I was taking various landscape pictures). As I did so, I ran across GeoCaching. In just a few hours I was able to learn all about and start another personal hobby.

In a nutshell, GeoCaching is small-time treasure hunting. People hide small boxes with interesting items in them (toys, CDs, etc.) and then post their coordinates on a web site, www.geocaching.com. Then, others program coordinates into their GPS receivers and find their way to the treasure, taking what was in the box and leaving goodies of their own.

As a person who likes to hike and with a family always looking for something fun to do, this seemed like something worth trying. So, in just a few hours I was able to research a topic, find applicable GPS receivers and begin a new hobby. Without the web, doing something like this would have taken quite a bit longer.

I love the web - the return of knowledge it provides is amazing.

Software, by itself, doesn’t make a great product. It sure can help, though. Outside my favorite Adobe products (InDesign, Photoshop, Lightroom, Flash, Dreamweaver - the list goes on and on - thanks Adobe for so many great tools!) there are few tools more valuable than basic screen capture.

And for Windows users, that means SnagIt, made by Tech Smith. SnagIt brings the basic screen capture (controlled by your keyboard’s Prt Scr button) to a whole new level. It allows you to capture portions of a screen, scrolling windows, set different keyboard shortcuts, save the screenshot directly to your computer and much, much more.

At $40, and as the industry standard, it’s worth a purchase - but, before January 7, 2008, Tech Smith has an offer that allows you to download and install SnagIt 7, which is only 1 version old, for free! Check out the link for the details on how to download. I ran through it myself and it worked quickly and easily; and, since the promotion is run by Tech Smith, you don’t have to worry about any of the spam-phishing-for-your-email-software-piracy stuff.

While I’m writing about great free downloads from Tech Smith, you should also check out the free download of another of their products, Camtasia. It is a tool that allows you to record in a movie-like manner what is happening on your computer. You can then output it as a video in many formats that folks can watch. It’s all the rage lately for online training and large online training companies like Lynda.com and KelbyTraining.com rely heavily on this type of a product to create their stuff.

I am now using Adobe Contribute to compose and publish my blog articles, which should help increase their frequency. This is an update to this post.

When was the last time you attended a training session held by your company or by an outside training vendor (the guilty shall remain nameless) and received a workbook or handout that was the standard 12 pt Times New Roman font with 14 pt. bold headings? If you got lucky, you might have had something with Palatino type and a few text boxes on it. Oh, and with some clipart (don’t even get me started).

I see it all the time. An organization needs to create training materials. They have Microsoft Word (almost everyone, at least. The Microsoft suite is often the only default productivity tool available in an organization). Therefore, the two must go well together.

I like to call Word the corporate hammer. It is a fairly handy well rounded tool, right? If you are looking to hammer a nail, then yes it is. When creating a brief outline, brainstorming or other Word processing tasks, Word works very well. Unfortunately, however, because Word is often the only tool available, everything becomes the nail. Fliers, quick reference documents, manuals, name cards, certificates and others all end up looking like nails when all that is available is the hammer - and are often mis-treated as a result.

So then, where does the corporate carpenter turn? The hammer is a trusted friend. How can someone give up Word when they finally conquered section breaks and figured out how to remove that extra blank page that always ends up at the end of a document? What else is available?

Enter the page layout tool. Other industries adopted more engaging looks and approaches decades ago. Magazine publishers, marketing companies and others spend a lot of $$ on making their materials look good. They understand the value of making a visually engaging cover page - it sells product.

A page layout tool is essentially a tool that incorporates Word processing with the ability to effectively manage and integrate graphics and other design elements to create a more appealing look. There are two primary tools on the market that are used by the majority of companies and are priced well; Adobe InDesign and Quark Xpress. Each has its side of evangelists that will proclaim whey their choice is the best. I’ll try to avoid that and simply say that I prefer Adobe InDesign.

InDesign can become an organization’s tool box. Screwdriver, saw, tape measure and more, InDesign can provide what Word hasn’t been able to -an engaging and effective product. What’s even better is that it provides powerful tools that make managing content development and the creation of documents more effective and efficient.