I’ve recently read Presentation Patterns, a ‘gang of four’-style book containing dos and donts for creating presentations. One of the patterns I was particularly impressed by was the exuberant title top. It sounds simple – a title is displayed in the centre of a slide.

On click, the title moves to the top of the page, leaving room for some content to be presented. The overall effect is that the content pushes the title to the top of the page.

It is fairly simple to implement this pattern if you are not concerned with the look of the slide if it is printed in handout format. When the slide is displayed as a handout, it is expected that the title will be displayed in its final position with the other content directly underneath. This means that the view in the Designer should match the final state of the slide.

Implementation Guide

Personally, I found the method presented for PowerPoint difficult to follow. One step specifies you to set a duration to 0, which does not seem to be possible in PowerPoint 2007, 2010 and the 2013 preview. So, I have found what I believe to be a far more effective method, which requires one less click to execute. Here’s how to do it:

  • Create the title, in its top position.
  • Add a ‘Disappear’ exit animation to the title and set it to start with previous. This will mean the animation starts instantaneously.
  • Add a motion path animation. This is a downwards path and moves the title to the centre of the slide. Set this animation to start with previous, and manually change its duration to 0.01 seconds. This seems to be the smallest value that you can set a duration to and although it is not an option presented in the Duration dropdown menu, you can just type the value in.
  • Add an ‘Appear’ entrance animation to the title and set it to start after previous. This means that the animation to the starting position is hidden from the user.
  • Add a motion path animation. This should be the exact opposite of the ‘down’ motion path from step three. Set this animation to run on click. This gives the presenter the opportunity to talk about the title, before introducing the related content.
  • Add the related content to the slide.
  • Add an ‘Appear’ entrance animation to the related content. Set the duration to whatever value you feel comfortable with (I like the very fast option). It should start after previous. This can alternatively be replaced with a ‘Fade’ animation.
PowerPoint animation pane screenshot describing the aforementioned animation sequence.

If you’d like to display each line (or bullet point) of your related content individually, this is possible using the advanced animation menu. In the ‘Text Animation’ tab, set the “Group text” value to “1st Level Paragraphs”.

PowerPoint screenshot showing how to set an animation 'after previous'.

This results in each bullet point / line having its own separate (albeit related) animation entry in the animations pane. From here it is possible to configure whether you’d like each bullet to appear on click, or after a fixed duration.

PowerPoint animation pane screenshot showing each bullet point animated individually.

Look, free download!

I have made both of these implementations available for download at this link. Included in this template are the two implementations described above. It should be the case that the slide you want to use can be copied and pasted into your own presentations. Enjoy!