9.2 Images, shapes, SmartArt and icons
Your slides show things instead of listing them.
Before:00. Getting Your FootingUnlocks:10. PowerPoint — Design & Delivery
Slides that show things beat slides that list them, and this topic covers the visual toolkit: images sourced and compressed properly, shapes and connectors, align and distribute for tidiness, SmartArt and icons used sparingly. It follows the layouts topic because visuals sit inside the structure it established. The full-bleed image with one line of text is the strongest pattern taught here. The common confusion is eyeballing alignment; the align and distribute commands do in a second what dragging never quite manages, and the difference reads as professionalism.
Work through these
Images: sourcing, cropping, compressing, alt text
Where a picture came from, cropping it to the part that matters, compressing it, and describing it for people who cannot see it. All four are quick and all four are usually skipped.
Shapes, connectors, align and distribute
Shapes with connectors that stay attached, and the alignment tools that place things precisely. Aligning by eye is what makes a deck look homemade.
SmartArt and icons, used sparingly
The diagram and icon galleries are useful in small doses and produce a very recognisable generic look in large ones. Restraint is the advice.
The full-bleed image slide with one line of text
One image filling the slide with a single line of text over it is a reliable, strong slide. It is worth having in your repertoire for the moments that need emphasis.
Practice file
- pp-01-fix-this-deck.pptx
A genuinely bad ten-slide deck: wall-of-text slides, clashing fonts, a misleading chart. Fix it.
Opens in PowerPoint. Every name, number and address in these files is made up. No account needed to download.
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Links last checked 29 Aug 2026.
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