Mac Law Students

Steve Jobs uses it when he is creating that famous “Reality Distortion Field.” Why shouldn’t you? Keynote is a slick, intuitive application that makes it easy to build spiffy presentations.

As a 1L, I didn’t need to use Keynote, as pretty much all I did was read cases and prep for finals. However, this semester I had to give a 30 minute presenation for my Mass Communications class. Keynote fit the bill perfectly. I’m sure I’ll use it a few more times before my days in law school come to an end.

The iWork software suite is available to students for $49, and includes both Pages and Keynote. I’ll (hopefully) review Pages before long, but for this article I’ll confine myself to dicussion of Keynote.

Keynote Strengths

Keynote’s default themes (templates) are elegant and refined, much more polished than PowerPoint’s less evolved templates. While PowerPoint does allow you to customize templates to your heart’s content, in law school time is of the essence. You don’t have much of it, and if you’re like me, you don’t want to spend it tweaking presentation templates. Keynote themes simply look more sophisticated, without (in general) being gaudy.

Dropping data in the form of charts and graphs is easy, and you can customize the display of such information. I recommend staying away from any chart format that distorts the data you are representing. Simple two-dimensional bar graphs or line plots aren’t as dynamic as orthagonal view charts, but they don’t play games with the data you’re representing, either. Plus, if you pick the right data, its value should be evident without having to distort it. OK, I’ll get off my soapbox now.

Keynote takes advantage of iTunes and iPhoto to delver well-integrated searching for media files. When you want to add an image, sound, or movie your presentation, Keynote lets you grab the file from wherever your media is stored. This is an excellent example of how integration between Apple’s iApps works better than the “command center” approach used by some application suites. You make use of components of iTunes and iPhoto from within Keynote in an inutitive, fast way, without getting bogged down.

Version 3 of Keynote has surprisingly robust image manipulation tools, which is helpful when you don’t want to or can’t do the work in a dedicated image application like Photoshop. You can adjust saturation (bleed out colors or bump them up), create a screen, adjust the contrast, and so on, all in one control. I find the real-time image preview to be a real time-saver.

If you’re reviewing someone else’s Keynote presentation, or making notes to yourself, the comment feature helps. Just as Stickies works in the Finder, you can drop these little notes wherever you want to on your Keynote pages. The text can be colored and resized as you would expect.

The Keynote developers went hog wild with slide transitions. Some of them are a bit much, in my opinion. They’re all very smooth, and can be timed very precisely. However, some of them are so involved that they could become a distraction. Use them sparingly if you want your audience to focus on what you’re saying, rather than on your slick Keynote effects.

Ideally, a presentation should illuminate information, rather than obscure it with too much “sizzle.” While your intention is to persuade viewers, law students, professors, and other people you’re likely to present to in law school will know when you’re trying to baffle them with bull****. I’d say a good rule of thumb might be: Stay honest in your presentation and you’ll have better odds of getting your message across. Keynote makes it easy to present information on screen in an appealing way.

Keynote Weaknesses

My biggest gripe with Keynote is that it takes a long time to open, and files take a long time to save. Thankfully, this speed lapse doesn’t apply to playing the presentation on-screen.

I also find the relationship between the Info window and image adjust window to be a bit odd. For example, to adjust the color characteristics of an image, I use the latter control, but to rotate said image, I have to open the former. It seems to me these tools should be housed in the same area.

Other Keynote and Presentation Resources

For a skeptic’s eye view of presentation software, see Edward Tufte’s scathing indictment: The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint.

Whether you’re using PowerPoint, Keynote, hand-drawn placards, or sketches on a wall, take a look at Presentation Zen. Garr Reynolds has deep knowledge of what works in presentations and what does not, and he generously shares his wealth of understanding.