CloudOn – Create, Review and Share Presentations from Any Device, Anywhere

 

We have discussed presentations for business using an iPad previously. Today we’ll be looking at Cloud-On; the iPad app that views and edits office files in the cloud.

The ‘cloud’ has become a game changer for businesses. It allows content to be stored on the web which can be edited and viewed by anyone (with permission), anywhere, but since this is predominantly used with Microsoft Office, where does this leave the iPad?

Meet the CloudOn app. Word, Excel and PowerPoint files can be uploaded to the cloud via DropBox or SkyDrive and then downloaded through the app. Files can be edited with some basic tools and previewed directly on the iPad. Content can also be created on the app and uploaded back to your favourite cloud service. Unfortunately when we tested it, the PowerPoint presentation quality wasn’t ideal; it was pixelated, sluggish and we also had issues playing video content. Overall performance is poor; we won’t be using it for our next pitch but it’s one to keep an eye on as further developments come along.

Ease of use: CloudOn is very simple to use and we liked the fact that it supports popular cloud based services like Dropbox and Skydrive.

Cost: Currently CloudOn is free as it is early on in development but they plan to use a tiered pricing structure in the future when more of the issues have been ironed out.

Final thoughts: CloudOn is still in its early days. We love the compatibility and ease of editing content on and off the app, but currently it’s a bit too sluggish to use and the quality of the presentations is poor.

Adobe InDesign – Just for Print? Think again.

We have discussed presentations for business using an iPad previously. Today we’ll be looking at using Adobe’s InDesign as a tool for creating presentations for the iPad.

InDesign is widely recognised as the premier print layout and digital publishing tool; we use it all the time for creating brochures, leaflets, business cards – almost all of our print output, so we were as surprised as anyone when we when we heard about this too. Via the free ‘Adobe Content Viewer’ app available for the iPad and the Adobe Digital Publishing Patch for InDesign on the PC or Mac, content created in InDesign can be downloaded and viewed directly on the iPad through your Adobe Creative Cloud account. Creative Cloud accounts are available for free from Adobe. The app doesn’t support InDesign animations and the only transition is the page flick. We feel this tool is aimed more towards the production of digital magazines than presentations. It does do a good job of hyperlinking content and it also plays video well too – with options to play in a window or full screen.

Ease of use: If you use InDesign already, you will be right at home creating content for the iPad. Any presentations created are uploaded through your Creative Cloud logon and downloaded through the app the same way.

Cost: We use the full Adobe Creative Suite in our studio so this addon was free for us however; InDesign is roughly £350 for a standalone licence. Although a Creative Cloud account is free from Adobe, software such as InDesign can be used through this service via monthly or yearly subscriptions.

Final thoughts: We thought this was a great PowerPoint alternative in terms of cost (as we already use the Adobe Master Collection which includes InDesign) and ease of use. The only thing letting this solution down is the fact that the animations and transitions in InDesign are all currently Flash based (so unsupported by the iPad). Considering how some of Adobe’s other applications have already begun to support HTML-5 animations, I wouldn’t be surprised if this changed in the near future, but for now we feel this is a fairly decent alterative.

Bring your content to life with Kinetic Text

Kinetic typography, perhaps more simply defined as ‘moving text’, is an animation technique that fuses text and motion. Increasingly present in popular culture, kinetic text is a dynamic, engaging way to bring ideas to life and is perhaps an appropriate tool for your business…
First coming to prominence in Hitchcock’s enticing title sequences of the 60’s, kinetic text takes a standard, un-inspiring bulk of text and, through movement and graphic style, transforms it to better portray the information.

Reading a large chunk of text can become incredibly dull and monotonous for any audience. With kinetic text animations this copy is brought to life and emphasised through variation in font, size, colour, motion, angles, shapes etc. Key messages can be enhanced in the layout and timing of the piece, whilst iconography and graphics can create visual metaphors to support them further.
This great piece on procrastination is a fantastic example of engaging text and illustrates exactly how specific sections can be highlighted.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJ2T4-rUUcs#t=110

A very current style in the design world, kinetic text is often supported by narration, or created directly from narration (as in the video above). This works incredibly well as this form of visual communication can really add to the voice. Subtle movements and visual motifs can paint a picture of whose voice the audience is hearing and therefore – as with every presentation – a good script is essential.

This video encapsulates two different ‘voices’ and shows how their individual personalities can be reflected through animation and visual style.

http://vimeo.com/50085266

Kinetic text captures audience attention and manipulates it to key areas, becoming far more memorable than block text. This is perhaps why many organisations now have ‘Who We Are’ text animations that help sum them up as a business. More personal than a couple of bullet-pointed slides and unique to their ‘voice,’ these animations can provide a great overview that is both interesting and informative. A gardening business, for example, could feature their text growing from shoots, floating down on leaves, or being trimmed by a mower: there are endless possibilities to be creative with text and this is perhaps why this creative trend may be around for a while yet; we even made one for ourselves.

Microsoft’s Answer to Presenting on the iPad – SkyDrive & WebApps

We have discussed presentations for business using an iPad previously. Today we’ll be looking at Microsoft’s offering, SkyDrive & WebApps in more depth.

Microsoft has recently released their Office app for the iPhone and latest iPod touch only. Their reasoning behind this is that SkyDrive & Web Apps are already available for the iPad. These work through the web browser on the iPad where you can access and edit your Office files online.

Unfortunately, we found that there are some irritating issues which regrettably let the service down; slideshows didn’t display in full screen (pinching to zoom in on them ended up with horrible pixilation of the presentation) and as the presentations are stored in the cloud, when we turned off the internet connection we were surprised to find that whilst the presentation still played fine the video content did not.

Ease of use: SkyDrive is very simple to use and many businesses will be using it (or at least SharePoint which works in a similar way) already. The web apps run Office software directly from SkyDrive in your browser with a simple click.

Cost: SkyDrive & WebApps is free. All that is required is a Microsoft logon which again, costs nothing to create.

Final thoughts: Considering this is from Microsoft, we were disappointed with the issues we encountered and really wish Microsoft would just release an official app for the iPad. The iPhone/iPod app is currently free if you are paying for the subscription based Office 2013 service. We think they would get a lot more subscribers if they offered the same app and scheme on the iPad.

Presentations for Business using an iPad

As professional presentation designers we predominantly use Microsoft PowerPoint to create presentations for our customers, the main reason for this?

Compatibility. A very large proportion of our clients are PC, or more specifically MS Office based and using PowerPoint. The content we create needs to not only be viewed by them, but also edited, simply and with minimal hiccups.

Three and a half years on from its launch the Apple iPad is still the tablet market leader. Its initial success throughout the home consumer market has now spread, to the business sector too. And this is where as presentation designers we are faced with a problem… PowerPoint is not currently compatible with the iPad.
Whilst Microsoft have just released their Office app for the iPhone and latest iPod touch models, which is of course a huge step in the right direction, there is still no sign of a release for the iPad.

Clearly our clients want to utilise the stylish and portable nature of the iPad, but they also need a flexible, creative and presentation solution so what options are available.

Over the next few weeks we will cover some alternative presentation software solutions we have found and the advantages/disadvantages of each:

Adobe Captivate – An e-learning suite for the PC that supports HTML5 conversion of PowerPoint presentations.

Adobe Edge Animate – A new animation based program from Adobe that is completely HTML-5 based and therefore compatible with every web browser.

Adobe InDesign – Widely recognised as the premier print layout and digital publishing tool, InDesign also offers export options for the iPad such as PDF.

CloudOn – An application that can download and play PowerPoint files via Dropbox or SkyDrive from within the app. It offers some basic editing tools.

iSpring – A PowerPoint addon that converts presentations into HTML-5. Once converted, presentations can be downloaded from the web onto the iSpring app for offline viewing.

Keynote – Considered to be the ‘Apple alternative to PowerPoint’, Keynote offers many of the same features to Microsoft’s counterpart. A dedicated Keynote app is available on the iPad however; to easily edit content a pricey Apple Mac is required.

PDF – Developed in the early 1990s as a way to share documents, including text and images, among computer users of disparate platforms; PDF files have become the format of choice when something absolutely has to be viewable by virtually anyone.

Prezi – A cloud based presentation software that mixes whiteboard drawings and slides. The zoomable canvas has proved to be quite popular with its fast growing user base.

SlideShark – We have blogged about SlideShark before; which you can read here. It is a free mobile app which enables PowerPoint presentations to be run from the iPad.

SkyDrive/Web Apps – Microsoft’s SkyDrive combined with Web Apps allows the viewing and editing of PowerPoint presentations from within a web browser.

Our alternatives listed here are by no means the full extent of solutions available; as new software arrives on the market we will review it and look out for further updates to existing presentation alternatives. With the uncertainty around whether or not Microsoft will release a full iPad app, these alternatives are currently our only choice. Depending on the type of presentation that needs to be created, we can and have put some of these programs and apps to use successfully already.

Presentation software reviews

Here at Bearfoot Graphics we are always keeping our eye on the latest presentation software. As presentation designers and live event operators we are always curious to see what has been released and how we can use it for our next projects.

We’ve got 3 new applications to review this time, Air Sketch, SlideKloud and an update to The Haiku Deck.

Air Sketch
Air sketch is an iPad app which transforms your iPad into a live whiteboard. Simply open a PDF document on your iPad through the Air Sketch app, the document on your iPad is now yours to annotate or draw on, appearing instantly on the screen allowing you to walk around the room making points as you go. You can even hand the iPad to an audience member to make a note or highlight a point too.

The app comes with a range of tools to use when annotating the page including a pen, brush, marker, pencil and a highlighter. You can also password protect the URL in case of sensitive information.

There are limitations to this app, you will need a Wi-Fi connection (it doesn’t work on 3G), and you must be running a browser that supports HTML 5 on the device being used to project, and the annotations speed of appearance depends on the internet connection speed too. The only documents you can use are PDF’s so if you had a PowerPoint or keynote presentation you would need to output as a PDF is order to use Air Sketch.

It’s a great tool for teaching, explaining complex work is easier, getting the audience to focus on a particular diagram, much better than a laser pointer.  The audience interaction is the key selling feature of this app, and I think, used with a small audience cold be a real asset.

SlideKloud

SlideKloud is an audience engagement app aimed at making presentations into conversations. There are a number of features to track the audience’s participation with your presentation including polling data on slide specific questions and the ability to comment and ask questions.

The app can be used on a smartphone, tablet or laptop through the cloud; there are both Android and Apple versions of the app. The presenter uploads their presentation to their device then pushes it to the audiences own devices via the cloud. Audience members logon to the app and are able to view the presentation as well as any interaction set up by the presenter. The audience are also able to save personal notes on individual slides, share comments and ask questions to the presenter all in real time.

To take full advantage of this app, the presenter will need to add into their presentation relevant questions to gauge opinions, knowledge and ideas.

Once the presentation is finished the analytics are in depth and provide the presenter with a wealth of data. There are some restrictions though, you must have Wi-Fi to use it as it’s entirely cloud based, and there is a monthly fee depending on how many presentation you may give.

I’m not sure if this app is a little over complicated for a standard conference or talk. Audience engagement and interaction is vital when giving presentations but I’m not sure getting an audience of 250 to logon using their smartphones is practical. I think this app has the potential to be really beneficial on a much smaller scale, where you can get a true reflection of the audience’s opinion and it’s a lot easier to co-ordinate.

To really see the benefits of this app, the presenter needs to think clearly about audience engagement as a first thought not an afterthought. Just adding in a question at the end won’t utilize this app effectively.

Haiku Deck 2.0
We reviewed the Haiku Deck a while ago and found it to be a nice(what kind of word is this?) app it certainly created nicer looking presentations but in our opinion more thought is needed to go into crafting presentations than just nice images.

Now they’ve released v2.0, the new update with new features. There have been big improvements to image adjustments, you can now crop, zoom and reposition images a lot easier. The image picker has also been improved giving better results for your content.

Unfortunately they have added in additional features including charts and bullet points. Although they have tried to keep them as simple as possible, this for us feels like they are heading down a road that follows the traditional presentation style and not the free thinking style that we really liked about the Haiku deck initially.

The charts are simple enough to compile, double tapping allows you to input figures and you can drag and pull to increase bars or pie pieces too. The chart styles are limited to Bar, Pie or Stat to keep it simple. One feature that is quite nice is in show mode if you tab on a piece of the chart, the rest will be greyed out highlighting that section. 

The bullet point addition again has some limitations, a maximum of five bullets on a slide and they can only be bulleted or numbered.

This update gives an improved social media interaction with Facebook, twitter and blogs; it is still a free app and can be exported to Keynote and PowerPoint for use at a meeting or conference.

The Haiku Deck update has definitely provided some great new improvements, but the introduction of charts and bullet points doesn’t sit well with us, their motto is “set your story free” not with bullet points I’m afraid.

If you like to talk to us about how new software can help your next event please feel free to call 01420 520 865

Bearfoot Graphics onsite graphics operators ensure your live events run smoothly

There is no doubt that working live in any profession is pretty daunting, this is never more true than working as a graphic designer on live events and conferences. The ability of the onsite graphics operator to rise to the challenge and really feel at home backstage can make the difference between a successful event and an unsuccessful one.





With a collective experience of over 30 years in the live events industry, our onsite graphic operators have been involved in pretty much every type of event, from intimate business meetings to large car launches to multi-room corporate conferences and even a couple of events which included indoor live ammo and chainsaw demonstrations!

We are not just PowerPoint operators. We are creative graphic designers too. We know what content will work on screen and, more importantly, what won’t. We understand the power of imagery and the clarity of correct fonts and colours. We love creating stunning graphics to enhance the event’s theme making the content interesting and memorable.

Interpreting slide content is one of our best skills, we constantly work hard to help our speakers unlock the power of their presentations by developing effective content and helping them to deliver it in a compelling way.

With so many events under our belt we really understand audiences, we use this experience to suggest strategies to the presenter, which will aid them in delivering their message to the audience without distracting them.

Presenting at an event can be a stressful experience, we believe that it is very important for a speaker to feel supported and have someone on their side. Our experienced onsite team work hard to create a rapport with the speaker very early on, we see it as being crucial to creating great graphics for them. A friendly, can do attitude goes a long way to developing this relationship and is something we pride ourselves on. Really getting to know the presenter, their content and how they like to present, makes pre-production, rehearsals on site and the event run smoothly.
Our role differs from job to job, but we are more than comfortable with any situation, from following the cue light or working with the speaker and autocue operator to mark up a script and create graphics.
The buzz of a live event is something you just can’t replicate in the studio, speakers often deviate from the rehearsal or change their mind, technical issues arise and you need to react fast and calmly and you most definitely have to be able think on your feet. But it’s what we’re well used to and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

We love working in the live events industry and hope we can work with you again soon.
Call us on 01420 520 865 to discuss your next live event project and how we can help.