How to use prezi and WIN

How to use
Prezi and win
thewikiman’s10top tips to make a good one

Prezi is an online
ZOOMING
presentation tool

You can find it at
Prezi.com

By the way, I’m not stabbing PowerPoint (or Slideshare) in the back here.

When used well, slides are still an excellent medium for presentations.

When used well, slides are still an excellent medium for presentations.
But sometimes you need something a little…

…different from the rest

A good prezi is fresh, and new

A good prezi is fresh, and new
and captures the attention of your
audience

In the same way that it’s hard to make a good impression with PowerPoint (even if you have a killer presentation), because people are so familiar with it…

…it’s easy to make a good impression with Prezi because people are wowed by the new.

So what are the keys to making a good one?

Create your STRUCTURE
first

It is really, really hard to design a Prezi as you go
along. It’s much better to create your structure
first, plan the outline and the top-down view of
the whole canvas, and then fill in the details
afterwards.

Think of it as a building: you want to lay the
Foundations at the start, and then build it up
block by block.

(Some people find it easier to map out the structure using a pen and paper before they begin.)

2. Choose your colour scheme early and
choose it well

In Prezi, you have to choose from various themes which dictate the whole look of the presentation. The fonts, the colour of the canvas, the colour of the text – all of these are in sets and can’t be mixed and matched.

In Prezi, you have to choose from various themes which dictate the whole look of the presentation. The fonts, the colour of the canvas, the colour of the text – all of these are in sets and can’t be mixed and matched.
Therefore it’s really important to pick your theme early, and stick to it. If you change it later, you’ll end up having to re-size and re-arrange everything to make it work again.

Think carefully about the theme you use. The same presentation can have a completely different feel and convey a completely different tone – make you choose something appropriate.

Think carefully about the theme you use. The same presentation can have a completely different feel and convey a completely different tone – make you choose something appropriate.
Here’s one I made earlier – watch how much it changes, and look how it messes with all my careful arrangements.

This is how it is supposed to look

Soviet chic! (Still kind of works, but ‘Begin here’ is already misaligned with its surrounding circle)

Pro Tip: everyone uses this one (It is nice, but makes for similar looking Prezis)

I must admit I almost prefer this one to the original

Ohdear.

3. Don’t make your viewers sea-sick

A lot of people complain that Prezis give them motion sickness. You can prevent this from happening by positioning your materials sympathetically.

Try and choose a path through your materials that is smooth and consistent. Avoid completely unnecessary swoops, spins, twirls or changes of perspective.

Go from A

Go from A to B

Go from A to B to C

Go from A to B to C in a straight line

Go from A to B to C in a straight line
rather than oscillating wildly all over the canvas

4. UnderstandSCALE

Prezi uses a canvas of almost unlimited size – this opens up all sorts of possibilities. Whatever you click on, or navigate to, fills the screen.

So you can have all your text, pictures, graphics and videos huge…

Or tiny.

Or tiny.
Make everything bigger than you think it needs to be in the first instance (trust me on this) and then you’ll have room to cram in more detail later.

And it’s always nice to include at least one massive

And it’s always nice to include at least one massive change of scale.

5. Understand how Prezi works with images

Perhaps the most important thing to know about images and Prezi, is that Prezi hates JPEGs. They always look grainy, and poor.

I don’t know why this is, don’t worry about it – just use PDFs instead. They work really well. Convert your JPEGs using www.online-convert.com or similar.

Remember, all your pictures will fill the screen when Prezi zooms in on them.

So let’s say you want to use a picture of an old fashioned camera. If you choose an image that is smaller than the full-screen…

Then of course it is going to look blurry when you zoom right in.

One way you can get round this is if you…

6. Utilise Hidden Frames

Frames are your way of controlling what the viewer sees, and how close up they see it. You can use frames the viewer can see, or hidden frames.

So to avoid grainy images, draw a large hidden frame round a small picture – then Prezi will zoom in on the frame, leaving the picture at its appropriate size.

You can also use frames to create interactive hotspots. Anything framed can be clicked on by the viewer (or by you if you’re presenting live).

So for example you could use a map of your town as the backdrop for your canvas, and then allow people to navigate to areas they want to learn more about by clicking the framed hot-spot.

Prezi will then zoom right in to whatever information or text you have lurking there.
For an example of this kind of interactive Prezi, click this box.

The other useful thing to use Frames for is to zoom in on a cluster of objects simultaneously – maybe two quotes and a picture, say.

7. Aim for a uniformity of
style

Prezi uses a wheel to adjust sizes.

Prezi uses a wheel to adjust sizes. So to make text bigger, you rotate the wheel and it increases in size on a sliding scale.

That means it is quite hard to get exactly the same sizes twice. Prezi will highlight any two pieces of text which are the same size, so take advantage of this.

The best way to get consistency is to create one piece of text / graphic / image then use the duplicate button and edit the duplicated version.

You can do this any number of times, with any number of objects on your canvas, and this helps give your presentation a cohesive look.

8. Show some RESTRAINT

The biggest enemy to making a good Prezi is
YOUR OWN AMBITION.

it is tempting to get it to do all kinds of crazy things.
Because Prezi is new and capable and kind of whizzy

But do you really need that wild diagonal path, or that haphazard placing of materials, or those little square brackets placed round ALL your titles?

Do you REALLY need

That 180 degree change of perspective?

That 180 degree change of perspective?
Be honest…

You don’t need to use Prezi’s full capabilities for every presentation you create. Pick and choose what is most appropriate for that particular one.

9. Some more of the nuts & bolts of producing
great presentations

Links: when you type a URL in to your Prezi, it doesn’t appear as a clickable link. For whatever reason, it will become hyperlinked once you save, exit and reopen your presentation.

Links: when you type a URL in to your Prezi, it doesn’t appear as a clickable link. For whatever reason, it will become hyperlinked when you duplicate the text.
(So once you’ve duplicated, delete the original and move the linked text into position.)

Mass changes: it took me a looong time to realise that you can move a whole group of objects at once (the entire Prezi, if you like) by pressing the shift key and then highlighting the relevant pieces. Saves loads of time.

Videos: you can upload video files but keep in mind that all you need to do to embed a youtubevidis type the URL into your Prezi as freetext. Then it appears as if by magic.

10. Above all make Prezi is
working for you, and not the
other way around
Prezi

It’s good to try new things, but if Prezi ain’t for you, it ain’t for you. Spend some time with it, learn it, and then only use it if it’s working for
you.
Prezi

GOOD LUCK!

All images from the frankly awesome
www.sxc.hu

by Ned Potter
For more stuff, go to thewikiman.org/blog

by Ned Potter
Or click this to see my other Slideshare presentations

by Ned Potter
Or click this to see my Prezi presentations

by Ned Potter
Click this one to go to my written Prezi guide

by Ned Potter
I’ve also written guides to
Netvibes
Evernote

by Ned Potter
Netvibes
Evernote
Twitter
Public Speaking
Working in libraries

by Ned Potter
Netvibes
Evernote
Twitter
Public Speaking
Working in libraries
Because I am a librarian. Just so you know.

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How to use prezi and WIN

by Ned Potter

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