When I was in undergrad, Prezi was the brand-new presentation tool craze. People were already sick of PowerPoint, and Prezi provided a slick new look and superior animation. It’s a little past the craze now, but Prezi is still a solid tool for providing a unique look among a sea of PowerPoint templates. It provides a range of customization options comparable to PowerPoint as well, so that you’re not locked into a certain look.
Emaze seems to follow the same idea, with focus on the animations taking center-stage. It forces the presentation-maker to cut their text down to the essentials. The templates do a lot of the heavy lifting for you, making it easy to create a visually high-quality product, but might run the risk of making you look less original if others frequently use the tool.
Canva I have been introduced to over the course of this class and I have simply fallen in love. The endless options, templates, and gorgeous end products make it easy to create any kind of handout or presentation you could want. There is less focus on animation in comparison to the other presentation tools in this week’s sandbox, but there is still minimal animation options and the end product does not suffer for them.
I wanted to like Haiku Deck quite a lot. The interface was simple but also provided a huge range of customization options. The name brought to mind our focus on Zen as design lessons. It seems to follow the same principles for restraint and simplicity. It’s easy to very quickly create a unique looking presentation that is restrained and visually appealing. However, I struggled very much with the ‘add a video’ feature. After several frustrating hours, giving up on that slide, I discovered that the free trial version did not allow me to download or share my finished presentation in any way. Quite disappointing, since it was otherwise a very easy tool to use!
Finally, I looked at Genial.ly. A bit similarly to Emaze, Genial.ly places a lot of emphasis on animated templates that look slick. Personally I found the customization options even wider and easier to use. It is very easy to quickly create a product that looks flashy and high-effort. The downsides are similar in that the templates are very recognizable and will suffer quickly from overuse. They also would be difficult to apply the Zen principles of restraint and simplicity to! Overall, though, I very much liked Genial.ly and Haiku Deck for different reasons. Genial.ly is much easier to use if you want to use the free version.
Pictures Used in Presentation:
Free-Photos. (2016). man-1209957_1920. [Digital image]. https://pixabay.com/photos/man-nature-viewpoint-viewing-male-1209957/
Free-Photos. (2015). person-731165_1920. [Digital image]. https://pixabay.com/photos/person-little-boy-kid-child-731165/
Nastya_gepp. (2018). rabbit-3660673_1920. [Digital image]. https://pixabay.com/photos/rabbit-hare-baby-girl-studio-toy-3660673/
SeaMedia. (2016). nature-1319768_1920. [Digital image]. https://pixabay.com/photos/nature-blue-sky-beautiful-woman-1319768/
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