If you’ve sat through more than 5 presentations in your life, you’ve most likely seen PowerPoint used badly. Yellow text on a white background (called a Ziegler in some circles) or a bunch of bad MS clip art files thrown on top of a cheesy looking repeating background image. The list of PP faux pas can go on forever, but thankfully, some people are starting to get it right. This isn’t a post about those people.

In my line of work, we use PowerPoint as a means of doing page layout. I cringed when I first saw that somebody was using this screen presentation program for doing print design. How dare these dullards try to undermine the established reign of design software from Adobe. I must stop this, I thought.

And then I came up against reality. There are only two comps in our office that have Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign installed on them. And of those, only one person in our office can do more than edit text using the software.

This means that every time I make something in Illustrator, it is VERY likely that I’ll be the one doing the edits and updates on that piece. If the six becomes a nine, then I have to mind. I’m the one editing and updating it. This isn’t a problem for things that we’re sending out to a printer. But when it comes to simple things that we’re going to produce in-house (small presentations, information binders and the like) it becomes a chore to have to keep going back into Illustrator in order to maintain the info.

Enter PowerPoint. Since we deal with large volumes of data, our account execs work primarily in Excel. Spreadsheets are king, and that’s just how it is. If you want a table pulled into Creative Suite, you have two basic options: 1) rebuild the setup in InDesign, and the copy and paste it to your other Adobe software, or 2) export the data from Excel as a PDF, and then try pull that PDF data into whatever you’re doing.

The first method is time consuming, and tedious, but you get to maintain full editability in your data. The second method is faster, but you can forget about editing the data easily. Many words are broken up into individual letters, and some letters aren’t even in fonts, but are turned into outlines at random.

PowerPoint fixes both of these issues. I can do a simeple page layout (most of our layouts have to be simple because we’re dealing with big freakin’ charts and lots of numbers), and I can keep the numbers and table structure editable.

The biggest selling point here isn’t that I can edit it. I can edit nearly anything. The draw is that almost anybody else can edit the files. All you need is a copy of MS Office. From the CEO using the iMac down to the junior account exec working off of a laptop in the broom closet can work on this file, make corrections, and update the numbers. They don’t need me anymore, atleast not for this task.

By working in PowerPoint for smaller projects involving volitile data sets, I  can turn over the file to be edited much quicker by someone else after I’ve done the designerly stuff to  it.I’m now free to focus on the 4 page brochures, or the cool mailer for one of our much more fun clients.

I balked at bringing myself down to the level of PowerPoint design. It’s beneath me, I though. No real designer should have to work in such a medium.

Now I see the reality of the situation: I can dash out a quick piece, let other people fill in the gaps in information, and I’m free to work on important items. I don’t have to deal with changing the numbers or the plan names every five minutes.

While tough at first, Designing in PowerPoint has saved me time and allowed me to put my energy to work in more efficient ways.

One caveate: I’m only offering this praise to PowerPoint 2007. Office 2k3 is crap.

I’ve worked with several people over the past 5 or so years. Many of the were more experienced than me, and for that I’m grateful. I like being around people who know more than me. All I have to do is sit back, ask the occasional question, and I get to soak up their knowledge and experience.

On the rare time that I’m stuck being the experienced one in the room, I find myself wishing I’d written down a lot of what I tell people. That way, I could send them that info, and not have to repeat it.

This post is going to cover Print Production. I’ll go over some basic terms and help with areas that usually present common problems to first time print producers. So, let’s dive in.

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