Clip art doesn’t have to suck. Really. Last month, I discussed some important initial ways to select and use PowerPoint clip art images for eLearning courses. If you’re going to use clip art, you want it to look professional. There are numerous ways to do this, and this month I’ll be discussing matching image type and using PowerPoint image-editing capabilities to match colored backgrounds and recolor images to match your color scheme.
- Color Me Matching, Part 1
- Color Me Matching, Part 2
Throughout the article, I’m using PowerPoint 2007 and showing PowerPoint 2007 screenshots. PowerPoint 2010 (to which I’m intending to change soon) should work almost identically.
Finding illustrations OR photos
For consistency of look, it often helps to stick to one type of image. For example, mixing photos and illustrations in the same course may look less professional than staying with similar types of images — illustrations or photographs.
For example, Figure 1 shows two slides from a time management course. One slide uses an illustration and one slide uses a photograph. Figure 2 shows the same two slides but with similar types of illustrations. I think the slides in Figure 2 look more cohesive. What do you think?
Figure 1: Two slides, using illustration (left) and photograph (right)
Figure 2: Two slides, both using similar illustrations
When you are searching for clip art in PowerPoint, you can select the type of clip art you are looking for in the Clip Art pane (Figure 3). You can click the All media types checkbox, or you can click only the check box for the type of media you desire. The Clip Art checkbox, in this pane, supplies illustrations.
Figure 3: Clip Art pane with Clip Art (illustrations) checked
