As a PowerPoint user, it is sometimes necessary to accurately translate a company’s marketing collateral to slide format. Often, this information arrives in the format of a company brochure, or copied blurbs from the website, or a long Word document bogged down with New Age sales jargon and irrelevant “stuffer” copy.
It is your job to find the needles of information in the haystacks of hype, to reduce lengthy paragraphs to mere phrases, to provide your audience with only the information they need to know. Brevity is your goal, bullet points your craft.
When tackling these projects, which can be nothing short of arduous for lengthy documents spread across multi-page presentations, there are some best practices and tactics to make your life easier and the final product better.
1. Read the content several times. Sometimes it takes a few takes to understand exactly what is being said, especially if the copy is technical in nature. This step is especially critical for freelancers, who might not be as familiar with the corporate messaging as an in-house designer or marketing support person.
2. Print the document out and read it from...