Preface

If you've discovered Prezi in the last few years or even very recently, you have become a part of an interesting movement that's rapidly changing how ideas are shared. If you're reading this now, then there's no doubt in our minds that you're completely sold on the fact that business presentations need to change. You're probably also sold on the fact that Prezi is exactly what's needed to make that change. In this book, you'll find all the tools and guidance to take your business presentations to the next level and build on what you already know about Prezi. Our aim is to take you from being a Prezi user to a Prezi master, and we hope you enjoy the ride.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Understanding the Prezi Frame of Mind, will show you how to start thinking about presentations through the Prezi frame of mind, which affords a nonlinear approach. We will also discuss three Prezi design steps that will help you to craft the perfect Prezis every time.

Chapter 2, Hands-on with Prezi Mechanics, introduces the basic mechanics of Prezi that are required to start creating a new Prezi of your own. Although we call these basics, even frequent Prezi users are likely to find some new ideas here.

Chapter 3, Consistent Branding for Business, explains how to create reusable elements that can be easily used in multiple Prezis to create consistent branding for an organization. We'll also explore how to customize the style sheets for your Prezi in order to get a completely custom style that will best suit your business brand.

Chapter 4, Importing Slides into Prezi, helps you understand the insert PPT feature and gives great tips on how to truly turn linear slides into nonlinear presentations. With PowerPoint being so dominant in business presentations for such a long time, there's no doubt you'll need to Prezify slides for your organization.

Chapter 5, Best Practices with Imagery, shows you two different types of imagery. It will help you understand the pros and cons of using them within the Prezi canvas. You will also get some useful tips on where to find imagery for your Prezi designs and how to create some of your own.

Chapter 6, Using Audio, teaches you how to add audio to your canvas and understand when this technique should and shouldn't be used. Audio can bring a whole new dimension to your Prezi designs and creates an engaging experience for anyone viewing it online.

Chapter 7, Inserting a Video, explores the benefits of using video files that are stored offline or online. We will also look at how to create our own YouTube account to edit and manage our files online.

Chapter 8, Using Projectors with Prezi, helps you understand why some of your Prezi designs don't look the same when projected onto a big screen and discusses how to plan for and navigate these issues. This is an extremely useful chapter that will help keep each and every frame of your Prezi looking useful.

Chapter 9, Prezi for Online Delivery, gives you some simple tips to help you to engage with your audience and keep them focused when exploring a Prezi on their own. Some of your Prezis will be accessed by colleagues and customers online, and because of this, you'll need to take a slightly different approach that really takes your audience into account.

Chapter 10, Customized Interactions, demonstrates how to create a custom menu for your Prezi designs. These menus can increase engagement and allow viewers to navigate directly to specific points within a Prezi. Allowing this type of interaction can really help your Prezi brand stand out from the crowd and works well when embedded on a company's webpage or blog.

Chapter 11, Prezi for Tablets and Phones, explains how Prezi works on mobile devices and gives tips for presenting with the devices themselves. If you're already using these devices, why not use them to present your new ideas to colleagues, managers, and clients?

Chapter 12, Online Collaboration, helps you work together with your colleagues to share ideas in an exciting and engaging way. There are lots of step-by-step instructions to help you to set up this collaboration and useful tips to ensure that you get the most out of these collaborations.

Chapter 13, Case Studies, looks at some of the ways other businesses have used Prezi. This chapter is meant to give you real-world examples that will get your creative juices flowing as you brainstorm ways in which you can implement Prezi in your own business.

Chapter 14, Getting Prezi through the Door, explores some of the barriers you may face when introducing Prezi to your business. This is going to be just as hard as mastering the tool itself, but we've given you lots of useful tips to help get Prezi through the door and into the hands of your colleagues.

What you need for this book

This book will allow you to advance your own Prezi skills. In case you're new to Prezi, we start with the basics, but even regular users will benefit from the ideas and techniques described in this book. It is aimed at helping you think, plan, approach, and build Prezis that engage and inspire your colleagues and customers like never before.

Who this book is for

If you use Prezi in business and want to take your presentations to the next level, or if you want to become the office Prezi master, this book is for you.

Conventions

In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows:

"You can save your file as blooms.html."

A block of code is set as follows:

<script type="text/javascript">
var player = new PreziPlayer('prezi-player', {
        preziId: "sk845xdbl9dn",
        width: 640,
        height: 480,
        controls: true,
        explorable: true
});
</script>

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "From the new sharing settings dialogue box, you can choose either the Copy link or Add people option to share the presentation."

Note

Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.

Tip

Tips and tricks appear like this.

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Questions

If you have a problem with any aspect of this book, you can contact us at <questions@packtpub.com>, and we will do our best to address the problem.