The very first version of PowerPoint Presentation was called ‘Presenter’ and launched as part of the Microsoft Office suite all the way back in 1990. Some of us may not even have been born when this first version was being launched, ahem, and we thought it would be interesting to see how presentation tools and presentation design has changed since then. This will mean taking us all the way up to the present day and the massive advances made in software design that has brought us to online presentation tools like Presbee.
Before PowerPoint Presentation, in the 80s, presentation graphics software was available but it was running off complex workstations that required skilled operators and cost huge amounts of money. In the mid-80s when computers became more readily available, anyone who could run an application and had access to a PC could now create a presentation. The first version as you can imagine was incredibly basic and the graphics were simplistic in comparison to anything we might use now.
As Microsoft launched its 97 Office Suite, Powerpoint was vastly improved, with the incorporation of VBA, or Visual Basics for Applications.
Keynote arrived in 2003, as a direct competitor to Powerpoint from Apple. As with PowerPoint, over time various improvements were made to Keynote and by 2006 these included HD compatibility, 3D charts, image correction and 3D transitions, which were unimaginable when we look back to the first version of Presenter.
And then as laptops, tablets, and mobile phones took a larger prominence in our lives and we were no longer chained to our desktop computers, software adapted and over the last 5 years, we’ve seen a complete transformation in nearly all aspects of software, including presentation software and presentation design.
Presentation Design in 2017
New programs such as Presbee, Prezi and Haiku Deck to name a few have broken the mould left by Keynote and PowerPoint and have completely changed the way we think about presentation design. The main change has been to the way we access our presentations. As we have moved away from our desktop computers, we need to be able to access all of our files and documents anywhere in the world, and hence, like Presbee, our presentation tools are now based online.
Other changes were made to the way that presentation design was approached. PowerPoint left a very lasting impression with its linear slide by slide template, and even though Keynote and PowerPoint itself offered alternatives to this when Prezi came along with its completely non-linear slide template it seemed almost revolutionary. Non-linear templates are now almost expected as much as linear ones, and are part of most presentation software design, including with Presbee.
Presbee as one of the newest and most innovative of the presentation tools we’ve listed also makes full use of its online platform, including the ability to conduct remote meetings using Presbee. Similarly, you can share your saved presentations live with viewers or remotely to those you have shared it with, even with the option to revoke access to your presentations if needed.
One of the most visually noticeable changes to modern presentation design is the improvements made to graphics. Now, creators can add transitions, incorporate video and moving graphics to each and every slide as well the ability to add audio in the form of music, noises or speech.
Presentation software is no longer just about designing slides instead as we can see with online presentation tools like Presbee they are ways in which to share, connect, collaborate and create. And who knows where and what kind of presentation tools we will be using in another 25 years?
Can you remember back to the early presentation software we mentioned earlier in our article? Where do you think innovations in presentation software design will take us in the future?
You can find out more about Presbee and its features here.
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