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Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Kitsch and Camp: The PowerPoint Twins
What's Kitsch? Kitsch is a black velvet painting. Garden gnomes, lava lamps, troll dolls, flamingo lawn ornaments, dogs playing poker -- all are classic kitsch. Often of poor quality, kitsch is an object that appeals to lowbrow, popular, or tacky tastes.
What's Kitsch? Kitsch is a black velvet painting. Garden gnomes, lava lamps, troll dolls, flamingo lawn ornaments, dogs playing poker -- all are classic kitsch. Often of poor quality, kitsch is an object that appeals to lowbrow, popular, or tacky tastes.What's Camp? Camp is the presentation of kitsch. Jon Waters, Cyndi Lauper, and Kiss are deliberately campy. Tom Cruise, Judy Garland, and Betty Davis are (probably) unintentionally campy. A campy presentation is so outrageously dramatic, inappropriate, gaudy, affected, or out-of-date it's ironic and funny.
What's contemporary kitsch & camp? When you watch VH1 "I Love the [insert decade here]" - you are watching a top 100 kitsch & camp report. In 3 years, what will be considered kitsch and camp for the '00 decade?
Will PowerPoint presentations make the kitschy cut? After all, there's a certain black velvet quality to many PowerPoint presentations......as well as to most Keynote presentations.
Oh, let's face it. Everything Apple is deliciously kitschy-campy. The Apple "Zen Aesthetic" is contemporary kitsch. By combining this spare design style with:
Kitsch and camp are iconic, ironic fun. When you're deliberately kitschy or campy, you can come across as witty and self-deprecating. However, if you're unintentionally Tom Cruise-y or Apple-campy, you risk appearing self-important or buffoonish.
Try jumping on a couch these days without appearing ironic.
Commit to your camp. If you have a kitschy style, make sure you affect a campy mannerism. This can help you more fully engage your audience. There's no sense having a clipart-y, cluttered, bullet point-y, totally 1990's Microsoft-kitsch PowerPoint presentation if you don't drive it home by, say, swaggering like Johnny Depp in Pirate of the Caribbean. Cringing like the evil Mr. Burns from the Simpsons while presenting with a very 90's slide design is also an excellent kitsch-camp combo.
What's on your kitsch list? What is contemporary kitsch that is currently not commonly recognized as such? What contemporary '00 kitsch & camp will become classic kitsch and camp in the '10 decade?
- the Jobs priestly-black dress code
- the gratuitous and cliched body language of Buddha-pose-faux-humility,
- PlaySkool-ish, Web 2.0-y graphics,
- the promotion of i-Everything,
- dancing iPod silhouettes --
Kitsch and camp are iconic, ironic fun. When you're deliberately kitschy or campy, you can come across as witty and self-deprecating. However, if you're unintentionally Tom Cruise-y or Apple-campy, you risk appearing self-important or buffoonish.
Try jumping on a couch these days without appearing ironic.
Commit to your camp. If you have a kitschy style, make sure you affect a campy mannerism. This can help you more fully engage your audience. There's no sense having a clipart-y, cluttered, bullet point-y, totally 1990's Microsoft-kitsch PowerPoint presentation if you don't drive it home by, say, swaggering like Johnny Depp in Pirate of the Caribbean. Cringing like the evil Mr. Burns from the Simpsons while presenting with a very 90's slide design is also an excellent kitsch-camp combo.If you're going to be design-kitschy, you'll want to commit to being presentation-campy.
What's on your kitsch list? What is contemporary kitsch that is currently not commonly recognized as such? What contemporary '00 kitsch & camp will become classic kitsch and camp in the '10 decade?
Labels: design, fun, images, photography, PowerPoint
¶ 11/13/2007 01:51:00 PM 6 Comments Links to this post
Friday, June 15, 2007
New Gmail PowerPoint Viewer is Weak
So Gmail has a new PowerPoint Viewer. If you send a PowerPoint attachment to a Google Gmail client, they see something like this at the bottom of their email:
When your Gmail recipient clicks on the "View as slideshow" link, a browser window pops up with forward and backward buttons. This lets those with Gmail clients click through the slide portion your ppt file -- without using PowerPoint or other viewing software.
And while that's kind of nice -- here's the downside. Sorry, no pptx files -- only ppt. And no sound, animations, or show notes either. Gotta Mac? Sorry, the new presentation feature does not work for Mac users.
The visual quality of the Gmail slide presentation is weak. In my test, the fonts ran completely amok.
If you'll recall, back in February the blogosphere was breathless with rumors of a Google "PowerPoint Killer". Four months later, this is all Google delivers (so far).
Let's see if Google can soon deliver a presentation product that really lives up to the hype!
So Gmail has a new PowerPoint Viewer. If you send a PowerPoint attachment to a Google Gmail client, they see something like this at the bottom of their email:
When your Gmail recipient clicks on the "View as slideshow" link, a browser window pops up with forward and backward buttons. This lets those with Gmail clients click through the slide portion your ppt file -- without using PowerPoint or other viewing software.And while that's kind of nice -- here's the downside. Sorry, no pptx files -- only ppt. And no sound, animations, or show notes either. Gotta Mac? Sorry, the new presentation feature does not work for Mac users.
The visual quality of the Gmail slide presentation is weak. In my test, the fonts ran completely amok.
If you'll recall, back in February the blogosphere was breathless with rumors of a Google "PowerPoint Killer". Four months later, this is all Google delivers (so far).
Let's see if Google can soon deliver a presentation product that really lives up to the hype!
Labels: Blogging, PowerPoint, Presentation Applications
¶ 6/15/2007 05:13:00 PM 6 Comments Links to this post
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
PowerPoint Death Watch
Almost one year ago today, I wrote that "Death by PowerPoint" has become a horrible cliche.
If you Googled the phrase last year at this time, the search engine dredged up 55,000 pages that use that term.
This year, we are up to 82,400.
That is almost a 50% increase. See chart.
Apparently, the cliche is here to stay. What will next year yield?
;)
Labels: fun, PowerPoint
¶ 5/02/2007 01:40:00 PM 0 Comments Links to this post
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Presentation Contest - Part 2
Yesterday, I posted that I would wait to upload a PowerPoint file at Slideshare until after their presentation contest was over. I thought that by uploading a file, I would be automatically entered into their "World's Best" presentation contest -- which is judged by an all-male panel.
Turns out I am mistaken (not about the all-male judging panel, that's still in play). But I did not see this rather obvious instruction at Slideshare:
Turns out I am mistaken (not about the all-male judging panel, that's still in play). But I did not see this rather obvious instruction at Slideshare:
Rashmi at the Slideshare team assures me that you can upload your presentations at Slideshare without entering their presentation contest. Merely uploading doesn't enter your presentation into the contest -- you actually have to follow the above instructions to opt-in.
So, you can go ahead and upload your presentations and share them with the world -- without the risk of subjecting your work or organization to a gender-biased panel review. That's a relief!
I tested this by uploading a short presentation that would stand no chance of winning a presentation contest! (Except for maybe in a Sanjaya "Vote for the Worst" kind of way.)
Sure enough, this uploaded presentation about gender bias in technology marketing is definitely not in the running! ;)
I tested this by uploading a short presentation that would stand no chance of winning a presentation contest! (Except for maybe in a Sanjaya "Vote for the Worst" kind of way.)
Sure enough, this uploaded presentation about gender bias in technology marketing is definitely not in the running! ;)
Anyway, some cool stuff is being rolled out at Slideshare. Not only can you upload your presentations, but Slideshare has now added a feature where you can download the presentation, too.
That can be a big bandwidth saver. For example, instead of emailing a PowerPoint file, you can upload it to Slideshare and point to the link in your email. Your recipient can choose to view or download your file -- when they are ready. This sure beats clogging up their email inbox with a huge PowerPoint attachment, no?
That's part of the beauty of Slideshare. It lets you share ideas. More easily.
That can be a big bandwidth saver. For example, instead of emailing a PowerPoint file, you can upload it to Slideshare and point to the link in your email. Your recipient can choose to view or download your file -- when they are ready. This sure beats clogging up their email inbox with a huge PowerPoint attachment, no?
That's part of the beauty of Slideshare. It lets you share ideas. More easily.
Labels: Blogging, PowerPoint, Presentation
¶ 4/19/2007 09:17:00 AM 0 Comments Links to this post
Friday, February 23, 2007
PowerPoint 2007 Downloads: 3 Free Options
So, someone sent you a PowerPoint 2007 file with the pptx extension -- and you have yet to upgrade to the latest version of PowerPoint. What can you do to quickly view the file?
So far, you have three free download options:
So, someone sent you a PowerPoint 2007 file with the pptx extension -- and you have yet to upgrade to the latest version of PowerPoint. What can you do to quickly view the file?
So far, you have three free download options:
- View pptx for free. Download and install the PowerPoint 2007 free viewer. It will open up PowerPoint files with the old ppt extensions, as well as the new pptx extension. Of course, you cannot edit the files with the new PowerPoint 2007 viewer. You can only view the presentation.
- Get compatible. If you have a 2000 or newer version of the Microsoft Suite programs and the correct system requirements, you can download and install the Microsoft compatibility pack for Word, Excel, and/or PowerPoint 2007.
- Try/Buy PowerPoint 2007. For a limited time, you can download one free 60-day trial the new 2007 Microsoft Office Suite systems -- choose from Professional, Standard, Small Business, Home and Student. After your two month free trial, you can buy the software.
As time goes by, I expect that we will see more free download options for opening, editing, and viewing pptx files. Hopefully soon!
But for now, one of these three options above can save you time by preventing you from contacting the sender and asking them to "Save As" ppt before resending the file. And since pptx files are smaller than ppt files, this will save you bandwidth, as well as time.
Labels: PowerPoint
¶ 2/23/2007 01:41:00 PM 0 Comments Links to this post
