I do ALL of my drafting and designing in PowerPoint. I just never had the opportunity or the resources to work in Photoshop, so I made PowerPoint work for me. From maps and other technical displays early in my career at small oil & gas companies to designing my logo, business cards, banners, Pinterest pins, and other graphics for Red Shoes. Red Wine., I’ve done it all in PowerPoint. Of all the people I know, which may not be a lot, I’m the best at PowerPoint. So I guess you could say that PowerPoint is my bitch.
So when my friend Christen of Short Sweet and Lovely began redesigning and migrating her blog to her own dot com, I offered to design her new logo. For free. Well…I work for wine and curtains (but that’s another story).
We started with a water color logo that an intern, who likes to doodle, made for Christen. I took a picture of the floral arrangement and threw it in PowerPoint to digitize. Above left is Angi’s doodle on canvas paper, and above right is the final version of Christen’s logo that I doodled in PowerPoint.
Before we get into my crazed PowerPoint doodling process, I want to share 12 of my most commonly used tools in PowerPoint that you may (or may not) know about.
- Add Commands
- Snap to Grid
- Set Transparent Color
- Picture Tools Format Tab
- Corrections
- Color
- Artistic Effects
- Drawing Tools Format Tab
- Curve
- Freeform Shape
- Edit Shape
- Paste Special -> Picture
Christen wanted peonies, hydrangeas, and tulips with a soft sans serif script font for her logo. I downloaded a free font for her and installed it on my laptop. Not wanting to use stock photos (I prefer to use my own) or steal images off the internet, I searched my photos for these three flowers. I found a peony from our trip to Woodinville wine country near Seattle, hydrangeas from our trip to Germany for a friend’s wedding (blog posts recapping that trip coming soon), and a tulip from happy hour at Hotel Zaza in Houston. I set all three pictures to Cutout using the Artistic Effects tool, adjusted the colors in Corrections and Colors tools, and tediously drew white covers around the flowers using the Curve tool. Once finished with each flower, I selected each grouping of picture and white covers, copied and pasted as picture. Then I used the Set Transparent tool to change anything white to transparent. Rotate, resize, overlap, cuss, rotate, resize, recolor, cuss, overlap…and voila!
Both of us are very pleased with how her new logo turned out. I even saved a signature, and a few flower variations for Christen to use as miscellaneous graphics for her site or Instagram. They really are lovely, if I do say so myself!
Go check out Christen’s redesigned blog, Short Sweet and Lovely in it’s new home at http://shortsweetandlovely.com/ and stay tuned for her self-guided walking mural tours and our self-guided walking geology tours (a few are below).
Walking Tours that Christen and I have Published:
Skyline Geology: A Self-Guided Walking Tour of Downtown Houston’s Buildings (City Hall Loop)
Tunnel Geology: A Self-Guided Walking Tour of Downtown Houston’s Buildings (Red Loop)
Other How-To Resources on Red Shoes. Red Wine.
Starting a Blog: Why and How-To
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