Question:  I need to create a PowerPoint presentation quickly for a presentation at the end of the week. Do you have any suggestions on how to make it look professional?

Answer:  If you have just a short time to create a PowerPoint, most people are limited to using bullets. However below are a few quick tips to dress it up a bit.

1. Go to http://info.unmc.edu/brandingresources.htm and select a PowerPoint template from the UNMC Branding page. Then use that template to create the presentation with bulleted items.
2. After you have all of your text entered onto the bulleted pages, consider adding SmartArt for a slide that introduces, concludes or serves as the most important information in your presentation. Convert the bullets to SmartArt diagrams by right clicking your selected bullets and click Convert to SmartArt. If you don’t like the first style you select, you can select a different layout from the SmartArt Design tab.
3. Add large dynamic photography – Either search Microsoft’s photos using a keyword appropriate for your presentation by going to Insert > Clipart and under Results should be, select  Photographs and click Go. I also recommend searching through wonderful dynamic UNMC photographs  at the branding resources page toward the top of the page.

Often great photographs will be more memorable than a bulleted list of text. I have suggested presenters try using only photos and copy their bulleted text to the notes section of their presentation. This requires you to know or rehearse your topic well, but is often more effective.

ITS is offering a PowerPoint Basics class showing some of these features on Thursday, Dec. 13 from 1-4 p.m. Click here to register.

I have to create a poster for a national meeting. I have a sample poster from a previous poster provided by a company that I would like to use. How do I change the colors to match the template?

First of all, all posters representing UNMC should use the UNMC Branding templates or at least the elements (UNMC logos, wordmark, colors, fonts, etc). This is to provide a consistent look for all UNMC publications and posters. Below are links to the UNMC branding information.

• Branding guide- http://webmedia.unmc.edu/publicaffairs/branding/UNMC_Brand-Identity_Guide.pdf
• Scientific poster guidelines – http://webmedia.unmc.edu/publicaffairs/branding/UNMC_Brand-Identity_Guide.pdf
• If you go to http://info.unmc.edu/brandingresources.htm and scroll down to templates, you’ll see the poster templates.

The easiest way to make sure you have the correct branding elements/colors is to download the template and simply replace the text from the UNMC template and save with a different name. Otherwise if using Microsoft applications, you can right click on the various text boxes or background and select Format and click Colors and click the Custom tab to enter the UNMC CMYK color codes. If you are not able to select the color formatting, you may need to go to View > Slide master and right click on the sections to get the color formatting options.