Animate with transitions for cool effects

Want to create cool animations that are amazingly easy? Try using transitions! Most people don’t think of transitions as a kind of animation, but they are.

Transitions are animations between slides — that introduce a new slide. Some of the transitions are quite interesting, and PowerPoint 2010 and 2013 introduced some great new ones. Ordinarily, I don’t recommend using transitions, because the way most people use them they are annoying and have no useful purpose. However, I’ve written about using transitions to help connect content that can’t fit on one slide — an example is a table that is too long. You can read more in my tip, “Dynamic transitions connect two slides.” But you can use some of the transitions as concepts. Here are some examples:

• The Fracture transition can represent the concept of breaking up
• The Door transition can represent leaving, entering, or opportunity
• The Crush transition, which looks like a crumpled piece of paper, can represent throwing away
• The Window transition can represent opening up

The following video runs as follows:

• Slide 1: When we argue … (no transition)
• Slide 2: … it pulls us apart (Fracture transition)
• Slide 3: Instead, we need to work together (Doors transition)
• Slide 4: Conflict makes all our work dissolve (no transition)
• Slide 5: So let’s work together! (Shred transition, with the Particles Out option)

Watch the video to see how it works. How could you use transitions as animation? Leave a comment!