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Ten Unusual Uses of PowerPoint

From Three-dimensional Battle Robots to Contemporary Art

The genius of PowerPoint is that it does a bit of everything: layout, animation, data visualisation, rudimentary 3D and vector graphics, basic image editing, a simplistic video editor, VBA scripting, GIF support—even embedding a website into a .pptx file. And since it’s installed on almost every computer in the world, it’s bloody easy to let your creativity loose. Over the years as a presentation designer, I’ve collected some of the most remarkable examples. Join me for some Sunday reading and broaden your PowerPoint horizons!

Table of Contents

🎮 Games 🎤 Karaoke 🐭 Animation 💎 3D Modelling 📊 Digital Signage 🎨 Contemporary Art 🌀 Fractals 📕 Books 🗂 PowerPoint OS 🖼 Illustrations

Games

© 2022 John Rodwell. TwisterPicture. PowerPoint Games, 6 April 2022. All rights reserved. PowerPoint is brilliant for quizzes and games in the style of Jeopardy, but with a bit of ingenuity you can build mazes, puzzles or even arcade-style experiences. Game mechanics typically rely on objects disappearing or moving when clicked. For a treasure trove of 170 hand-picked PowerPoint games by the talented John Rodwell, see his site below: PowerPoint Games ⌘↑

Karaoke

© n.d. PPT Karaoke. Available at: http://www.pptkaraoke.co. All rights reserved. You can’t miss PowerPoint Karaoke either—a game of improvisation where you present slides you’ve never seen. It’ll liven up even the dullest corporate gathering. Starter slide decks here: pptkaraoke.co powerpointkaraoke.com ⌘↑

Animation

Tablet maker Huion once ran a competition for the best PowerPoint animation. Below is a selection of standout entries—browse Twitter under PowerPointAnimator hashtag for more.
© 2021 Huion Animation Contest. THESE ANIMATIONS were made in MICROSOFT POWER POINT?!!. YouTube, 15 January 2021. All rights reserved. Another cracking example is JB Squiddy’s cartoon POISONED. In that competition they mostly used frame-by-frame animation—one slide per frame. But here you really see PowerPoint’s own animation tools in action.
© 2019 JB Squiddy. POISONED. YouTube, 1 June 2019. All rights reserved. ⌘↑

3D Modelling

PresentationLoad works wonders in PowerPoint 2010. Yes, there’s a sort of 3D in PowerPoint—not terribly useful for real projects (I’ve never needed it professionally), but perfect for building three-dimensional battle robots from scratch, rather than importing models. Check it out:
© n.d. PresentationLoad. The MechWarrior—an amazing PowerPoint artwork. YouTube. All rights reserved. ⌘↑

Digital Signage

This electronic queuing system was made entirely in PowerPoint. PowerPoint sees plenty of use in digital signage. Unlike other systems, you can tweak content and styling yourself. DataPoint even lets you pull in live weather data. For instance, PresentationPoint offers dashboards, menus, weather and other interactive content—all within PowerPoint. Their add-in DataPoint can even pull live weather data: DataPoint by PresentationPoint ⌘↑

Contemporary Art

© 2001 David Byrne. Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information. All rights reserved.
The genius of PowerPoint is that even a complete idiot can learn it. I taught myself in a few hours, and that’s the point. David Byrne
In 2001, artist David Byrne of Talking Heads fame created a series titled E.E.E.I. (Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information) entirely in PowerPoint. Byrne reimagined the tool as an artistic medium, poking fun at how its visual style shapes culture—for pure amusement. Explore the project: Official Project Site Discussion on Edward Tufte’s Site New York Times: David Byrne's Alternate PowerPoint Universe Wired: Learning to Love PowerPoint ⌘↑

Fractals

Tom Wildenhain used the Zoom feature to create recursion—when a slide links to itself, PowerPoint generates infinitely receding thumbnails:
More on PowerPoint’s Zoom Feature ⌘↑

Books

© 2015 Nancy Duarte. Why I Write in PowerPoint. Harvard Business Review, 27 July 2015. All rights reserved. Nancy Duarte, head of a top presentation agency and author of several slide-design books, actually wrote her works in PowerPoint. Its ease of mixing content, sharing and revising makes it ideal. Read her Harvard Business Review piece on the process: HBR: Why I Write in PowerPoint by Nancy Duarte ⌘↑

PowerPoint OS

© n.d. JellyOs. JellyOs—Preview (PowerPoint OS). YouTube. All rights reserved. Once there was a community recreating entire operating systems in PowerPoint—because they could. Some stuck to animations; others built mini-apps with VBA. It’s escapism: devoting hours to mimicry purely for the thrill, proving the interface is bulky yet absurdly simple to master: Reddit Thread on “PowerPoint OS” ⌘↑

Illustrations

With taste, colour sense and shape mastery, you can craft stunning illustrations, icons and graphic designs. JB Squiddy’s smartphone wallpapers are a great example—shadow, gradient and curves all done in PowerPoint: © 2023 Jesse Alberts. "Papercut." Jesse Alberts's website, accessed 29 January 2023. All rights reserved. Here’s a neat example of creating icons in PowerPoint:
© 2016 Tim Slade. How to Create Icons in PowerPoint + Free Download. YouTube, 29 February 2016. All rights reserved. Boo Jia Hao’s drawing of Kuchiki Byakuya from Bleach (now archived on PowerPoint Heaven) shows what’s possible with PowerPoint’s vector tools. ⌘↑ ～ #medium #powerpoint #2k23