One of the techniques that Carmen Taran mentioned in her Outstanding Presentations Workshop 2011 presentation, that can help you create more authentic slides, is to hand-sketch a diagram or image on a piece of paper, scan it, and add it as an image to a presentation.
Here’s an example:
Here are the steps:
- Sketch something on a piece of paper.
- Scan it to an image format.
- Insert the image onto a slide (Insert>Picture).
- Click the Format tab, then click Color in the Adjust group. Choose one of the settings that works for your slide. In this situation, I needed the color of the sketch’s paper to be different from the white background of the slide, so I chose an option that gave the picture’s background a yellowish tinge.
- Add a shadow to give the effect of the paper being slightly off the slide. Choose Picture Effects> Shadow on the Format tab. (In 2003, choose Shadow from the Picture toolbar.) Choose one of the options. In 2007/2010, I suggest then choosing Picture Effects> Shadow again, then Shadow Options to open the Format Picture dialog box, with the Shadow category displayed. You can almost always play with the settings to get a more striking shadow effect.
- If you want, add a pushpin. Choose Insert> Clip Art and search for pushpin. I used PowerPoint 2010’s Remove Background feature to eliminate the background.
I had no idea how artistic one could be using power point until I joined Carmen’s webinar yesterday. Some of the photos she used to portray a concept are still etched in my mind today. Thank-you Ellen for exposing us to such genius.
Cathy Cohen-Fort Myers, FL
You also might want to make the hand drawing editable by using the freehand drawing tool to trace / recreate the shape. Just gives you another option for fine tuning the shapes in the image but still keep it organic in nature.
That’s a great idea, but in my experience, you need a stylus, like the one that comes with a Wacom tablet, to have much success. At least for me, a mouse is pretty awkward for drawing. For example, the stick figure I drew for the first slide in my presentation at http://portal.sliderocket.com/AQELQ/Slide-Design-for-the-Artistically-Challenged was done that way.
John, your method delivers a more electronic look to a drawing, which may sometimes be desirable, too, and worth fussing with if you only have a mouse to draw with. Even then, it’s hard to avoid selecting the original shape by accident when you’re trying to draw a new shape over it. To avoid that problem, I paste the original hand-drawn picture as a drawing guide in a master slide, then exit to the normal slide view to begin drawing my matching shape over it. Now there’s no worries about the original guide shape jumping around by accident. When done,… Read more »