Don’t Click to Add Title: PowerPoint is for Presentations, Not Posters

There are two ways you can convey information – personally and impersonally. The personal manner is more involved and more detailed, and you may even have to bust out a PowerPoint presentation. The nominal application, which is part of the Microsoft Office Suite, gives people a simple method of organizing and showcasing ideas. Every slide is personalized, which means leaving them out in the open, in the eyes of the masses, can turn ugly very fast, and you won’t even be there to see it.

Aptly Named

When you present to a room full of people, the control lies in the remote, and the remote lies in your hand. All you need are some decent slides, interesting headers, and a bit of charisma. The application handles the first one very well, but impersonal information dissemination is a different ball game. Minnesota marketing professionals from eagan-mn-2636.theupsstorelocal.com note how control is no longer with the presenter. The creator of a poster, ad, video, or publicity stunt is at the mercy of the public’s attention span.

You cannot stand beside the poster you made and explain it to everyone who passes by. All you can do is cross your fingers, hoping that some people saw your printed slide, read it, and were convinced to oblige to whatever it is your poster asks. It’s in the name: PowerPoint, and when the power to get a point across is not with you, it loses much of its appeal.

Boilerplate Design

Speaking of appeal, posters made in PowerPoint rarely end up decent anyway. Unless you have a bit of graphic design knowledge, chances are your poster will be less than inviting. Besides the fact that PowerPoint slides have an orientation which is very un-poster-y, they usually end up with the same default templates Microsoft provides. If a person glances a poster with a familiar bland PowerPoint theme, besides looking boring, the thing it advertises would seem rushed and uninspired.

There is a myriad of options for poster creation out there, regardless of design expertise. Websites offer free ways to create beautiful posters updated to modern design sensibilities. People who are feeling a bit more inspired can use Adobe Photoshop or InDesign, even Microsoft Publisher –an application few Office users know they have.

Posters require great effort to be effective. Simply pasting information onto a PowerPoint slide will not cut it against other forms of impersonal broadcasting. Photos speak a thousand words, but the designated attention span for them shortens even more when actual words become involved.