"About Us" - Using Images, Icons and Text - Part 1

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About this lesson

We will create an 'About Us' slide and learn how to insert pictures, icons and text. We will also learn the basics of moving and resizing objects and some simple but effective formatting techniques.

Exercise files

Download the ‘before’ and ‘after’ PowerPoint presentations from the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.

4.04-creating-an-about-us-slide-part1 - Exercise.docx
1.2 MB 4.04-creating-an-about-us-slide-part1 - Exercise Solution.docx
1.7 MB about-us-background.jpg
4.2 MB

Quick reference

Slide 2: About Us - Using Images, Icons and Text - Part 1

It's time to expand our knowledge and build an 'About Us' slide. This will give us a change to practice some of the skills we have already learnt and introduce some new techniques. 

Many presentations contain some kind of 'About Us' slide. It's generally used to provide a brief overview of the company to the reader. 

In Part 1 of this lesson, we are going to use pictures, horizontal guides, alignment tools, shapes, grouping and formatting to start building this slide. 

When to use

Include an 'About Us' slide when you want to give the reader an overview of your company and/or the products or services you provide. 

Instructions

Add a New Blank Slide

  1. From the Home tab, in the Slides group, select New. 
  2. Select Blank. 

Add a Horizontal Guide

  1. Right-click on the slide and select Grids and Guides. 
  2. Select Horizontal Guide. 
  3. Drag the horizontal guide so it's 3/4's of the way down the slide. 

Insert a Background Image

  1. From the Insert tab, in the Illustrations group, select Pictures. 
  2. Navigate to the image folder. 
  3. Select an image and click Insert. 

Crop and Fill

  1. From the Picture Format tab, in the Size group, click the lower-half of the Crop button. 
  2. Select Fill. 
  3. Drag the bottom black handle up to the level of the horizontal guide. 
  4. From the Picture Format tab, in the Size group, click the lower-half of the Crop button. 
  5. Select Fill. 
  6. Move the position of the picture if necessary. 
  7. Click Crop. 

Add a Transparent Shape

  1. From the Insert tab, in the Illustrations group, select Shapes. 
  2. Select the rectangle shape. 
  3. Draw a rectangle over the top of the image only. 
  4. Right-click and select Format Shape from the contextual menu. 
  5. From the Shape Options, Fill category, select a dark grey colour from the palette. 
  6. Adjust the transparency slider to 10%. 

Add Shapes

  1. From the Insert tab, in the Illustrations group, select Shapes. 
  2. Select the oval shape.
  3. Hold down SHIFT and draw a circle.
  4. From the Shape Format tab, in the Size group type 2.24 into the Height and Width boxes. 
  5. Press CTRL+D three times to duplicate the shapes. 

Align Shapes

  1. Select all of the shapes. 
  2. From the Shape Format tab, in the Arrange group, click Align.
  3. Select Align Middle and Distrubute Horizontally. 
  4. Press CTRL+G to group the shapes together.
  5. From the Shape Format tab, in the Arrange group, click Align.
  6. Select Align Center.  
  7. Use the arrow keys to make minor adjustments. 

Format Shapes

  1. From the Shape Format tab, in the Shape Styles group, click Shape Outline.
  2. Select Weight. 
  3. Choose 3pts. 
  4. From the Shape Format tab, in the Shape Styles group, click Shape Fill.
  5. Choose a dark purple color from the palette. 

Remove the Horizontal Guide

  1. Drag the horizontal guide all the way down to the bottom of the slide to remove it. 

Hints & tips

  • Use arrow keys to make minor adjustments to the position of shapes and objects on a slide. 
  • Use a vertical guide to position objects vertically. 
  • If you type an exact size in to the height box for a shape and the width box changes or wont let you type in the exact width, click the diagonal arrow in the bottom right-hand corner of the group and select Lock Aspect Ratio. 
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  • 00:01 So it's time to move on to slide two.
  • 00:04 And slide two is going to be the About Us slide.
  • 00:09 And this is the slide where you give a brief description about the company and
  • 00:13 maybe highlight some of the company's key selling points.
  • 00:18 And if you take a look at the completed version,
  • 00:20 this is what we're going to be aiming for.
  • 00:22 So this gives us a chance to practice some of the skills that we've already learned
  • 00:26 and also progress a little bit by exploring some other features and
  • 00:30 functionality.
  • 00:31 So without further ado, let's get going.
  • 00:33 So the first thing I'm going to do here is I'm going to delete out the current slide
  • 00:37 two because this was really just to practice aligning and selecting objects.
  • 00:42 So in our Slides pane on the left hand side, I'm just going to click on Slide
  • 00:46 two to select it and hit the Delete key on my keyboard.
  • 00:49 Let's jump up to new slide and insert a new blank slide.
  • 00:54 So the first thing I want to do here is I want to add an image but
  • 00:57 only really to the top third of this slide.
  • 01:00 Now something I like to use when it comes to dividing up slides into thirds or
  • 01:04 halves or whatever I want to divide them up into is horizontal and vertical guides.
  • 01:10 So let's right click on this side, go down to grids and guides, and
  • 01:14 I'm going to add a horizontal guide.
  • 01:16 And it adds it in the middle.
  • 01:19 You can drag this horizontal guide up and down and position it wherever you like.
  • 01:24 And this really does help you when you're trying to lay out your slide.
  • 01:27 So I want my image to be about three quarters of the way down this page.
  • 01:31 So, let's say about that.
  • 01:33 And above this line I want an image.
  • 01:34 And below this line I don't want anything,
  • 01:38 I just want to see the white of the slide background.
  • 01:43 Now again, I already have the images that I'm going to use in this presentation
  • 01:47 saved off.
  • 01:48 As I said, all of my images are from pexels.com.
  • 01:51 So I can jump straight up to the Insert tab and into pictures.
  • 01:56 I've got this stored off in the Downloads folder.
  • 01:59 And as this company is based in New York,
  • 02:01 I'm going to choose this picture just here of the New York skyline.
  • 02:06 Now once again, we have this same issue.
  • 02:08 This time the image is a bit too tall for the area that I want to fit it into.
  • 02:13 It's also not wide enough because I have whitespace around the outside.
  • 02:18 So let's use our crop and fill trick, up to crop and down to fill.
  • 02:24 I'm then going to use these handles,
  • 02:26 I'm going to drag the bottom one up to where I have that horizontal guide.
  • 02:31 Then I'm going to drag the one on the right out to fill that white space and
  • 02:35 the same thing with the one on the left up to crop again and let's fill that space.
  • 02:42 I can then make any manual adjustments by dragging up and down.
  • 02:47 And let's make sure we get the top of the Empire State Building, very important.
  • 02:52 Once I'm happy with the position, click on Crop and
  • 02:55 I now have an image perfectly sized in the top third of this slide.
  • 02:59 Now much the same as we saw in the title slide I want to add a transparency over
  • 03:03 the top.
  • 03:05 So we're going to use the same approach.
  • 03:07 We're going to insert a shape.
  • 03:09 We're going to choose rectangle, and
  • 03:12 we're going to draw a big all rectangle over the top of this image.
  • 03:16 Let's make sure that we have no outline around the outside of that shape,
  • 03:21 and then right click and jump into our format shape menu.
  • 03:25 And this is where I can come to choose the color of the shape.
  • 03:27 So for this one, I'm going to use a darker color.
  • 03:28 And then I can adjust that transparency to whatever I want it to be.
  • 03:35 So let's say we want it reasonably opaque because I'm going to have quite a bit
  • 03:40 of text on top of this and I want to make sure that it's readable.
  • 03:44 So let's just remind ourselves very quickly what the completed article
  • 03:48 looks like.
  • 03:49 So my next step is going to be to add these circles with these icons inside.
  • 03:54 So let's switch back and draw four circles.
  • 03:59 So select the circle drawing tool, hold down Shift and drag to form a circle.
  • 04:05 Now, you can experiment with this but
  • 04:07 I actually know what size I want these circles to be.
  • 04:09 So if you know the exact size, with the circle
  • 04:14 selected on the Shape format tab right over the edge,
  • 04:19 you can type in the size manually.
  • 04:22 And I want these to be 2.24 by 2.24. And then I'm going to duplicate this shape
  • 04:27 three more times Ctrl+D one, two, three, and
  • 04:31 drag the shapes into some kind of position.
  • 04:35 And again, this is where we can utilize our alignment tools.
  • 04:38 So let's select all of the shapes by holding down Shift up to align.
  • 04:43 Let's say, align middle.
  • 04:44 And I also want to distribute them horizontally,
  • 04:45 Ctrl+G to group them all together.
  • 04:46 And then I'm going to align the whole
  • 04:51 group vertically into the center.
  • 04:56 Now for me, this isn't quite right, I actually want these circles to be half on
  • 05:00 top of that picture and half on top of that white space.
  • 05:04 So I'm just going to move them down very slightly.
  • 05:06 Now I have them grouped,
  • 05:07 I can apply formatting to all of them at the same time.
  • 05:11 So let's jump up to shape outline and I want a white outline.
  • 05:17 I'll also want to change the weight of that outline to 3 points.
  • 05:21 And then finally, I'm going to change the shape fill.
  • 05:24 I'm going to choose a color from our theme colors and
  • 05:26 let's just make those a dark purple color.
  • 05:29 So at this stage I'm pretty much finished using my horizontal guideline.
  • 05:33 So don't particularly want it running across my screen,
  • 05:36 at the moment is just getting in the way.
  • 05:38 So if I hover my mouse over the guideline until I get that double headed arrow and
  • 05:42 just drag all the way down to the bottom of the screen,
  • 05:45 that's going to remove that guide.
  • 05:48 That's the end of part 1.
  • 05:49 This lesson continues in part 2.

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