PowerPoint 2008 SmartArt for the Design Challenged

SmartArt is one of the new PowerPoint 2008 features that I was most looking forward to after reading about in blogs and articles. I've been using it for a few years in Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 for Windows since its beta testing period. If you a graphically designed challenged like me, SmartArt will become your best friend. It can also be your worst enemy if you go layout crazy. So, I recommend starting simple to see what works best for the types of presentations you create and give. Here's how I think about presentations and use SmartArt in PowerPoint 2008.

My presentations tend to be either instructional (how to type presentations) or introducing a technology concept (what something means and why it is important). For better or worse I live in a bullet point presentation paradigm. SmartArt can really help make plain lists of bullet points more interesting and add clarity.

An initial look at SmartArt might lead you to think that you need to start out by creating lists (bullet points) from the SmartArt interface. This might be confusing and actually slow you down since you start thinking too much about the graphics. Fortunately, this isn't the case. I prefer just creating PowerPoint presentations without any formatting at all in order to concentrate on the concepts and the text to discuss those concepts. This means that I don't have any themes or SmartArt applied until I have completed a first full presentation draft. Then, I go back to look for a theme that fits the presentation and look for lists that can benefit from being transformed by SmartArt into a more graphical presentation. I select the list on a slide (Command A), right click (or Control Click on a single button mouse) to bring up the pop-up menu, and then select the Convert to SmartArt option. This displays the SmartArt choices right above your slide. Note that there are 7 groups of 12 pre-designed SmartArt graphical designs to choose from (a total of 84).

You will probably end up trying a bunch of different SmartArt designs to learn what works for your particular type of lists. One of the first things you find is that some designs do not work well with bullet items to have more than one or two words. Once you have a mental model of which designs do and don't work with wordy lists, you'll be able to narrow down which ones to try much faster.

For many slides, you are finished at this point and can move on. However, PowerPoint's SmartArt lets you fine tune the pre-designed layouts in many different ways. I, for example, have developed a preference for 3D buttons and text boxes. SmartArt's simple menu options lets you quickly tweak a variety of graphical format options: Graphic bullet style, bullet shape, colors, and organization chart type (if applicable).

If you have PowerPoint 2008, grab an old slide deck with a couple of lists and try out the SmartArt feature. You might find that it can help make a simple list more interesting or, even better, easier to understand.