Last week, we talked about built in animations for charts and infographics in Keynote and Powerpoint, including Keynote’s powerful Magic Chart feature. This week, we delve into how to animate the separate elements of charts for greater control and more interesting effects. While too many chart types exist for me to cover every one in a blog post, I’ve chosen some of the most popular ones. These methods can be applied to any type of chart or infographic. Next week, we will end this series with how to animate Information Design that doesn’t use traditional charts. Combined with what we’ve covered so far, you should be able to animate just about any type of infographic you can imagine after that post.
For all rectangular graphs:
First, you will need the X axis and Y axis, which you can draw in either program by going to the insert shape menu and choosing line or rectangle. You will then need to draw labels on the side and bottom. A shortcut is to insert a line chart or bar graph and edit the data so the X and Y axes have the labels you need. Then simply “cover” the graph part with a white box (or a color that matches the background of your slide), and place your animation on top of that.
Line Graphs:
In Keynote: Use the pen tool to draw your lines. When you click on the shape menu, the pen tool is to the right of the search bar, not included in the regular shapes. Once you have drawn your lines, make sure that the lines are selected (remember that if nothing is selected, Keynote will apply the animation to the whole slide as a transition), and choose Build In -> Line Draw in the animate panel. The options will let you control the speed, direction, acceleration, and delivery. You can also opt to animate each segment separately. Use the build order panel to control the amount of time between the lines appearing and whether the line draw animation is triggered by clicking or the end of the last animation.
In Powerpoint: Instead of drawing with the pen tool, you will choose line from the insert shape menu. Under the animation tab, choose add animation, and choose wipe as the “entrance” animation. Adjust the timing, order, and trigger from the animation toolbar across the top. Click effect options to control the direction of the effect.
Bar Graphs:
In Keynote: Bar Graphs are one of the types of charts that can use the Magic Chart animation. To use Magic Chart, insert a bar graph from the interactive charts menu and edit the data across all fields. If you would rather not use Magic Chart for some reason, you will need to create the bars that will be animated with rectangles from the shape menu. When you have finished creating the first state of the chart, duplicate the slide and then edit the chart on the second slide to reflect the changed data, On the first slide, apply the transition Magic Move. This will animate the objects seamlessly from one slide to the next. Remember to duplicate the entire slide; if you simply copy the chart from one slide to the other and apply the transition, Keynote will not render the effect correctly.
In Powerpoint: There is no equivalent of Magic Chart in Powerpoint, so to achieve the effect, you must use two slides. On the first slide, use rectangles from Insert -> Shape to draw a chart that matches your first set of data. Duplicate the slide, and change the size of the rectangles on the second slide to match your second set of data. On the second slide, apply Morph from the Transitions Menu to achieve the same effect as Magic Move in Keynote.
Circle Graphs and Pie Charts:
Circle Graphs and Pie Charts must be animated over two slides in both programs, using either the Magic Move Transition on the first slide (Keynote) or the Morph Transition on the second slide (Powerpoint). Insert the chart on the first slide. Duplicate the entire slide (not just the chart) and edit the chart on the second slide. Apply the transition and adjust the parameters. Play around with the speed of the transition until you like the way it looks.
As always, please let me know if you have any questions. Join us next week to learn how to animate non-chart infographics.
Substance and Style 