PowerPoint has a lot of features that make presentations much more visually effective. One of the most powerful ways presenters can reach an audience is delivering clean, clear messaging. In order to do this, each accompanying slide needs to be clear of clutter and easy on the eye. After all, you want your audience hanging on to your every word instead of drowning in bullets, charts and graphs. SmartArt is the easiest way for a non-designer to create visually interesting slides. If you haven’t played around with it much, no worries! Follow these steps to become more confident with your SmartArt skills.
Demo
As always, here’s Kyle, our Creative Director, with another quick and helpful step-by-step tutorial. He’ll show you how to quickly and easily convert a boring bulleted list into easily digestible SmartArt image.
Step-by-step
Here’s everything Kyle went over in the video laid out for you step-by-step.
Convert text
1. Select your text.
2. Select Home > Convert to SmartArt.
3. Select the SmartArt you want.
Insert pictures
First select a SmartArt option with pictures, and then insert your pictures.
1. Select your text.
2. Select Home > Convert to SmartArt.
3. Select More SmartArt Graphics and then select Picture.
4. Select the SmartArt you want and select OK.
5. To insert a picture, select the picture icon, go to where your picture is located, and then select it.
6. Select Insert.
Play around a bit
There are a ton of different options to choose from, so the hardest part of all of this is figuring out which table or shape best suits your information. Our rule of thumb is less is more. Try not to go overboard—keep your SmartArt clean and simple. The more confident you get, the more you can go into advanced features. Remember that your audience shouldn’t be spending time trying to decipher what your bulleted list turned SmartArt is trying to say! They should grasp that quickly and spend the rest of the time listening to you. The goal of your SmartArt is durability. You want them to track with what you’re saying and hopefully remember it long-term.
Feeling like you need a bit more than SmartArt has to offer? Ethos3 has a full line of presentation design, content and delivery services for you. Take a minute to reach out and connect with us today. We look forward to helping you give your best presentation yet!
