PowerPoint Tutorials

Tutorial: A Simple Way to Beautify Lists in PowerPoint

May 30, 2018 By Yousef "Yoyo" Abu Ghaidah Leave a Comment

Every time I encourage someone to approach PowerPoint a little more differently, I always get the same excuse.

“I’m just not creative enough.”

I find that statement infuriating. If people just took the time to learn a few tricks in PowerPoint, they’d be able to create stellar PowerPoint slides in minutes.

To prove my point, I created this tutorial to show the world how easy it is to create something beautiful by using an ordinary list. And yes, that means skipping the bullet points.

You’ll be able to get a slide just like the one you see above, in less than 10 minutes.

The Video Tutorial

Everything you need to do is shown step-by-step in the video below. You’ll be done in no time. I’ve also summarized the steps in this post.

Step 1: Find a Background Picture for Your PowerPoint Slide

First things first, you need a beautiful, high-resolution image to make up your slide background.

Lucky for you, Slide Cow published a post showing four different resources where you can get these images for free.

But don’t go for just any image. Be sure to use the BARE principle to pick the perfect one that matches your communication goals.

For this tutorial, I’m using a fantastic view of some brown hills, and because it’s so beautiful, I made sure the image takes up the entire slide.

Step 2: Add the Overlay and Title

To add the overlay effect, go to Insert > Insert Shapes > Rectangle. Now draw out a rectangle in the middle of the slide. Change the color to black, and set the transparency to around 15%.

Now’s the time to add a title. To do this, go to Insert > Insert Text Box and draw out a text box on the left side of the overlay you just made. Type in your title.

You can be as creative as you want here. Choose whatever font, size, and color that appeals to you. But if you’re after my results, then follow these options:

Set the font to Arial Nova.
Change the font size to 28 points.
Highlight the text and go to Home > Character Spacing > Loose
Highlight the text again and go to Home > Line Spacing Options. A dialog box will pop up. Under Spacing, set the ‘Line Spacing’ to multiple, and set the numeric figure to 1.25

When you’re done, go to Insert > Insert Shape > Rectangle. Draw out a thin rectangle just underneath your title, and make sure there’s some good space between the title and the rectangle you’ve just drawn out. Don’t forget to change the color of the shape and remove the outline.

Step 3: Beautify Your List With Icons

If you’re wondering how to bring in fully editable icons into your PowerPoint slide, then look at Slide Cow’s icon guide. If you’re feeling extra creative, then be sure to check out how you can add long shadow effects to your icons.

My list has four points, so I went with four text icons to represent each point. Needless to say, if you have more items on your list, then bring in more icons.

Once you have your icons loaded, keep them off the slide canvas for now.

Now, go to Insert > Insert Text Box and draw out a text box somewhere on the right slide of the overlay effect you made. In this text box, you want to put only one of the items on your list. Remember, each text box represents one item.

For this tutorial, my textbox is designed with the Arial font at 12 points. But you can go with whatever you’d like.

When you’re happy with your text, bring in an icon that symbolizes what you typed and place it above your text, aligned to the left.

Now replicate the text box and icon as many times as you need to make sure you include all the points in your list. Position these cautiously, as you want to have enough white space in your PowerPoint slide.

Right now, you should have as many text boxes and icons that you need to capture your entire list on the right side of the overlay.

Now comes the tricky part.

You have to find a way to position everything (your list items and title) to the center of the slide without overlapping any elements. This can be done by eye, but if you’re looking for something precise, then use the Group and the Align Middle features. You can see how I used them in the video tutorial.

A Professional Look

Okay, so if you’re in an industry that doesn’t tolerate artsy-farty techniques, then don’t worry!

All you have to do is remove the image and overlay, and change the color of the text to grey.

And by the way, if you’re looking for PowerPoint slides that you can use within minutes, then check out Sleek. It’s a PowerPoint template that was designed for the corporate world.

PowerPoint Lists That Are Beautiful!

How easy was that?!

See? I told you! You don’t need to spend hours and hours to be creative. You can learn how to create beautiful PowerPoint slides by following easy-to-implement techniques.

No more excuses! Get to work and create something stunning.

A Beautiful, Creative Way to Present a Statistic in PowerPoint (Tutorial)

May 2, 2018 By Yousef "Yoyo" Abu Ghaidah 3 Comments

Looking for a creative way to present an important statistic?

Look no further.

In this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to design a slide so beautiful that it gives your statistic justice. You won’t even need to use Photoshop, Excel, or any of that stuff; all you need is PowerPoint, an image of your choice, and a dash of creativity.

The end result will look something like this.

1. Find a PNG Image To Use

Before designing anything, your first job is to find a picture that can be used to present your key statistic.

The goal is to find an image in a Portable Network Graphic (PNG) format. PNGs are one of the few image types available that can handle transparency. Transparency, in this context at least, refers to the lack of a background. If you’re interested, SitePoint has fantastic write up on different image file types that you can check out.

One more thing: don’t go for just any image. Choose a high-quality photo that follows the BARE principle.

Once you found what you’re after, bring it into your slide canvas, and position it wherever you’d like.

2. Turn Your Image into a Bar Chart

Select your slide and duplicate it by pressing Ctrl + D. You should now have two identical slides that you can play around with.

Go to your first slide, click on the image, and then go to Format Tab. Click on Color and choose the Grayscale option.

Now go to your second slide. This time you’re going to pick a color overlay. To do this, click on your image and go to Format > Color > More Variations. Choose whatever color you’d like.

You should have two slides with different color patterns, like so:

Now click on the image on your second slide (the colored one). Click Crop in the Format Tab.

This is where things get interesting. Crop the image to reflect your statistic. If, for example, your statistic highlights 30% of something, then crop the image until you have 30% of it left.

Don’t bother being precise. Nobody is going to take out a ruler and start measuring whatever is on your slide. Just go for something indicative.

Now, press Ctrl + C to copy your cropped image. Head to your first slide (the one with the grayscaled image), and press Ctrl + V to paste it.

Voila, you just created a creative bar chart using images. You can now delete your second slide and move on.

3. Express Your Statistic With Text

So you’re done with the illustrative part. Awesome. Now, type out your statistic to reflect the illustration you made.

Don’t be afraid to be creative in this step. Use a combination of different fonts, font sizes, shapes and colors to really bring out your message.

A Creative Solution That Works Perfectly

See how powerful PowerPoint is? A lot of users don’t even know they can do something like this, let alone do it easily.

By going through these three easy steps, you too can create a slide that expresses key statistics in an intuitive way.

Now it’s your turn; go ahead and create a slide similar to the one in this tutorial.

If you run into any problems, or just want to show me what you’ve made, then just drop a line in the comments section.

5 Simple Steps to Create the Ultimate PowerPoint Timeline Graphic

April 18, 2018 By Yousef "Yoyo" Abu Ghaidah 2 Comments

Timelines are fantastic story-telling tools to use in presentations. They allow us to visualize significant milestones, key events, and incidents over time in one easy-to-digest format. When creating timelines, most PowerPoint users opt to use SmartArt. The thing is, SmartArt is boring! If you want to connect with your audience, you need something simple, practical and beautiful. That’s why I’m going to walk you through the step-by-step process of creating the ultimate PowerPoint timeline graphic (from scratch). We’re going to be using different colors, icons, shapes and text boxes. The best part? We’re going to convey one timeline over multiple slides.

A GIF of a stunning PowerPoint timeline graphic — The end result.

Step 1: Set up the Powerpoint Timeline Graphic

First things first, you have to decide on how many slides you want for your timeline graphic. For this tutorial, we’re going to use three different slides to make sure the timeline graphic flows seamlessly.

Once you have your slides, I recommend adding a colored background to each. You can do this by going to any slide, right-clicking the slide canvas, and clicking Format Background. Go ahead and choose a color that best represents your message. I went with blue, yellow and red for mine. Of course, you don’t have to add any colors to the background at all. But adding some contrast to your slide is a great way to drive your point home.

Once you’re satisfied with the slides’ backgrounds, it’s time to add a header. You’re going to use a text box to do this. This text box will be the heading for the entire PowerPoint timeline graphic. As such. you should only do this for the first slide

Go to the first slide, click on the Insert tab, then click on Text Box.

Type in whatever heading you’d like, customize it with your choice of font and size, and align it to the center. Be sure to place this text box in the upper area of your slide.

The time has come to set up the structure of the PowerPoint timeline graphic. Go to the Insert tab, click Shapes, then click on the Circle: Hollow symbol.

Draw out a small hollowed circle in the upper area of your slide, color it white and remove the outline. Make sure there is a noticeable gap between the ring and the title.

Click Shapes again, and this time click on the Line symbol. Draw out a line going down your slide, with the starting point being just underneath the hollowed circle. Make sure the line is white, too. Feel free to add some thickness to it by going to Format > Shape Outline > Weight > 4.5 points.

A basis for your timeline infographic — Your first slide’s layout should like this.

Go ahead and apply the actions outlined above to your other slides. Just be aware of two things:

Ensure you identified a start, middle, and end of the whole PowerPoint timeline graphic. In my example, the ring in the first slide signifies the start point, the line drawn downwards highlights the middle, and the ring in the last slide brings everything to a close.
Aim for consistency. Get the line and circles to follow the same position, path, color, and thickness as illustrated in the first slide.

You should end up with something that looks like this.

Step 2: Create One Milestone (With a Date)

Milestones highlight a significant stage or event in your PowerPoint timeline graphic. They are the critical components of your message, so it’s important to do things right.

Go to the Insert Tab, click on Shapes, and then click the Oval symbol. Draw out an evenly-sized circle and place it on your timeline. Just like the first step, remove the outline and color it white.

While you’re still on the Insert tab, click on Text Box and position the element on the left side of the circle. Type in the date for the milestone, increase the font size to something noticeable and align it to the right.

Step 3: Expand on the Milestone

So we have our first milestone on the PowerPoint timeline graphic. Awesome. Now, we’re going to expand on it by adding an icon, a sub-heading, and some text.

The critical thing to note here is that all three components have to talk to one another. You want a sub-heading that gives insight to the milestone, a bit of text to expand on the sub-heading, and an icon that visually ties everything together.

Make sure you position these elements as shown in the figure above (notice how everything is aligned to the left). When you’re happy with the way everything looks, group them up by highlighting all the components and then press Ctrl + G.

To finish off this step, position your grouped element on the right side of milestone’s circle.

By the way, I used Slide Cow’s Business Casual PowerPoint template for my icons. There are over 295 fully editable ones in there. If you need beautiful icons, and you need them now, then consider checking it out.

A sample set of icons from the Business Casual PowerPoint template.

Step 4: Repeat Steps 2 and 3 to Continue the Timeline

You should now have a milestone that is both beautiful and informative. Great work! Now, you’re going to use that same milestone as a reference point for all the other events.

Highlight everything that makes up your first milestone (the date, the circle, and the grouped element) and press Ctrl + G to group it up.

With your grouped milestone now selected, hold down Ctrl + Shift + Left Mouse Button and drag your mouse down. You should end up with another milestone that is an exact replica of the first.

Select your second grouped milestone (the one you just made), go to the Home tab, click Arrange > Rotate > Flip Horizontal.

Click on the element you just rotated and hold the left arrow key until you position the circle (the one that signifies the milestone) in the middle of your timeline.

This part is a little tricky, so refer to the GIF below for further support. I want you to align the text in your second milestone in the opposite direction set out in your first. Remember how the date in the first milestone was aligned to the right? Align the text in your second milestone to the left. Similarly, your sub-heading and text boxes are going to be aligned to the left, and not the right.

Assuming you’re finished with formatting and positioning, it’s time to start adding your message. Change the date, icon, sub-heading, and text in your second milestone to whatever you want.

A GIF to show how to use the first milestone to create the second milestone — Putting it all together.

Congratulations, you can now repeat this step as many times as you want for all of your slides.

A PowerPoint Timeline Graphic spread over three slides — Beautiful, isn’t it?

Step 5: Polish It All up with a Push Transition

In PowerPoint, slide transitions are cosmetic ways to move from one slide to the next. With a Push Transition, the incoming slide is being ‘pushed’ into the frame, thereby forcing your previous slide out of the way.

Putting it into practice, you’re going to hold the Control Key and select everything except the first slide. Now, go to the Transitions tab and click the Push transition.

You’re done! To make sure everything works, hit the F5 Key to go into Slide Show mode and watch your beautiful PowerPoint timeline graphic come to life.

That’s a Wrap!

In this tutorial, you learned five simple steps to create a compelling PowerPoint timeline graphic over three slides. If you liked the material, please let us know by sharing it with your friends and colleagues.

Also, if you’re facing any problems, just let me know by posting in the comments section below. I’m here to help!

How to CORRECTLY Place an Image Inside Your Text in PowerPoint

April 4, 2018 By Yousef "Yoyo" Abu Ghaidah 3 Comments

There are tons of tutorials on the internet that will teach you how to place an image inside text in PowerPoint. Sadly, most of these tutorials opt for the most comfortable method, which usually leads to a hideous slide.

Setting Up

To get things going, you’re going to have to do two things: get some text on your slide, and choose a picture that you want to go in it.

For our tutorial, I’ve written “Smile” on the slide, set the font size to 240, and chose a bulky font to go with it.

PowerPoint slide with the word "Smile" in it — You can use any text that you’d like. Just keep it short.

The picture I’ve chosen is a woman holding a sticky note with a smile drawn on it.

Yes, this picture a stock photo, and I think it fits the theme I’m going for.

By the way, if you’re looking for free stock images that are gorgeous, then check out this post which highlights four resources that you can use. Make sure that the image you’ve chosen follows the BARE principle.

The Wrong Way to Fill Your Text with a Picture in PowerPoint

What most would do is right-click the text box on the slide, click Format Shape, and then, under Text Options, click Picture or Texture Fill. From there, a picture can be selected and automatically placed into the text without issues.

Don’t do this.

Indeed, you can get a picture into your text in under 10 seconds, but your slide will end up looking like garbage since the picture’s resolution will also be distorted. Furthermore, you won’t be able to position the image inside your text under any circumstances. What you see is what you get, and that can be daunting.

Correctly Placing an Image into Your PowerPoint Text

To do this correctly (and consequentially, beautifully) you’re going to have to be innovative with PowerPoint’s features.

1. Cover Your Slide With a Rectangle

Go to the Insert tab, then click on Shapes and select a rectangle. Cover your entire slide with that rectangle. You also want to make sure you remove the outlines of that rectangle.

When you’re done, right click on the rectangle and click Send to Back.

2. Subtract the Rectangle with the TextBox

Hold the control key, and then click on the rectangle shape first, then the text box second. With both elements highlights, go to Format tab and click on Merge Shapes > Subtract. You’ll end up with something that looks like this.

3. Bring in and Position Your Image

This step is self-explanatory: select any image you’d like and bring it into your PowerPoint slide. Right-click it, and click on Send to Back. You can then move the image around and position it wherever you’d like.

Once you’re happy with the size and position of your image, click on the rectangle and change its color to whatever you’d like. I chose white for mine since I wanted it to match my slide’s background.

4. (Optional) Spice it Up

Why stop here? You can play around with your slide and add some creative flair to it. For instance, I’ve added a color gradient to mine just to give it some feel-good vibes, similiar to the section break tutorial I posted recently.

This is a Creative Solution (That Works Perfectly)

Like I said in the video, the whole idea of this is to make sure you have the chance to manipulate your image in any way that you would want to. It’s your slide after all!

If you have any comments or questions, please drop a line below.

How to Design a Beautiful Section Break Slide in PowerPoint

March 23, 2018 By Yousef "Yoyo" Abu Ghaidah Leave a Comment

Designing a section break slide is pretty easy; heck, you can even argue that designing a beautiful one isn’t all that hard. But when you’re asked to design a beautiful section break slide solely based on the instructions given to you? That’s when things get really difficult.

Let’s Play a Game

This week’s PowerPoint tutorial features One Skill, the great PowerPoint wizard who dedicates his free time teaching people just like you to design absolutely breath-taking slides.

Him and I got talking and decided to collaborate on a PowerPoint tutorial together. The goal was for us to find a way to create an absolutely stunning section break slide and highlight how we did it, every step of the way.

We wanted this tutorial to be as interactive as possible so we decided to play a little game. The rules are simple: One Skill has to be my eyes, and I have to be his hands. In other words, it was One Skill’s role to tell me exactly what to design. I would then take his instructions and design a section break slide based on his requirements. The whole design process is captured in real-time, and you can even witness our friendly banter.

The end result is spectacular, wouldn’t you agree?

Full discloser: this isn’t Slide Cow’s first rodeo with One Skill. We created epic slides together, and will probably continue to do so for a while.

Make Your Section Break Slide Interactive

The idea of turning one’s instructions into ‘good PowerPoint design’ is to get a feel of what goes on in the real world. Let’s face it: everyone has something to say about your work. This is especially true in PowerPoint, because anyone can instantly process exactly what you’ve done within a few seconds. It’s therefore important for you to tailor your skillset to the needs of the people that are involved. In my case, One Skill’s satisfaction was my priority. I even started to suggest things to make the slide look better. In your case, it could be different, but the idea still holds merit: you have to balance your technique with the requirements of those who matter.

Need Something to Use Right Now?

If you’re looking for a beautiful section break slide that you can use right now, then check out the Strive PowerPoint template. It’s a multi-purpose PowerPoint template with 94 gorgoeus slides and 360 beautiful line icons. Oh, and it’s 100% editable.

What do you think?

Do you enjoy tutorials like these? Would you like to see One Skill on Slide Cow again soon? Let me know by dropping a line below.

Here’s How To Make a Stunning Venn Diagram in PowerPoint

March 6, 2018 By Yousef "Yoyo" Abu Ghaidah Leave a Comment

Thanks to PowerPoint’s SmartArt, creating a Venn diagram is a painless process. You can get the whole thing done in about 10 seconds and call it a day. The problem, however, is that the different models and infographics that SmartArt provides look like crap. Sure, you’ll have a functional slide and all, but it won’t help you really sell your message. Why not learn how to create a stunning Venn diagram instead?

Beautify PowerPoint’s Venn Diagrams

The goal is to customize your Venn diagram to look ravishing. Indeed, we will be using PowerPoint’s SmartArt feature, but we will only be using it as a foundation for the PowerPoint slide. We’re going to change all the colors, bring in our text boxes, add some connectors, and dab a few icons too.

Yes, it is extra work, and yes, it is going to take a little extra time to get things right. But there’s a price to pay if you don’t want your slides to bore your audience to death.

Watch And Learn, Folks!

I don’t believe in typing out tutorials. Who has the time to keep alt-tabbing between a browser and a work-in-process slide anyway? Instead, I have everything packaged in a video that you can learn from.

Do keep in mind that there isn’t a ‘right way’ to do this. You don’t need to follow every step to the letter – just follow what you think will work for you and your communication goals.

Oh, About The Icons

As you may have noticed in the tutorial, the icons are completely editable. If you have no idea how to get similar icons into your slides, then you might want to check out this tutorial that covers how to do just that. Alternatively, you can always buy a PowerPoint template that comes with stunning icon sets.