My kids love stickers. They plaster dozens of random ones on a page and proudly give me their new work of art. This approach to graphic design is fine for your family, but you don’t want your elearning courses to look like cluttered and random creations developed by sticker-happy children.

Get Rid of the Clutter

In this post, you’ll discover how to use your clip art to create images that are consistent and look like they belong together. Let’s get started by looking at the image below.

My guess is that you’ve seen this type of screen before. This elearning course looks kind of sloppy and unprofessional. It’s a cluttered design and the images don’t look like they belong together. This is not want you want for your course.

You want your screens to be less cluttered and have a consistent look and feel.

When you’re on a budget and have limited access to graphic resources, you need to be creative. If you’re forced to use clip art, odds are that you don’t have enough or the right ones. In the previous post, Little Known Ways to Create Your Own Graphics Using PowerPoint, we looked at ways to easily take Microsoft Office clip art and create your own images.

Now, let’s apply those techniques to create a consistent look for an entire elearning course.

Search Microsoft Office Clip Art

I am working on the assumption that you have the clip art package that comes with Microsoft Office and that you are using PowerPoint. The tips and tricks might work elsewhere, but I cannot guarantee it.

You can search Microsoft Office Online and find thousands of images and clip art. The search process is pretty standard and simple enough. If you want clip art of just people, you do a search for "people" and all you get is people. If you want to fine tune it, you search for "business people."

Use the clip art properties to find the right image and style

When you select an image, you’ll see the image properties. In the example above, there are two things to focus on: keywords and styles.

• Keywords identify the clip art. Clicking on a keyword is a good way to search for images. Sometimes I’m not quite sure what I want so I just start with a word like "business women" and see what comes up. I find an interesting image, look at the properties, and see what other keywords they use to tag the image. This gives me better ideas on how to search for a particular type of image.

• Styles are images that are part of the same package. When I find the clip art I like, I go to the image properties and click on the style. All of the images fit together and share a common look. When I find a style I like, I download all of the images in that style. This way I can break them apart and use the elements I need.

Download your style and create custom images

For this example, I’ll use "style 1382." As you can see below, there are lots of good images to choose from. There’s also a nice color scheme.

I used this style and color theme for a presentation I did while in school at Pepperdine. As you can tell, I have the vocal talent of a mime. However, the presentation’s look is simple, clean, and uses the techniques I am detailing in this post.

Here’s what to do:

• Download all of the images to an open PowerPoint file.
• I like to spread the images out over a series of slides so that I can easily see them. I can fit quite a few on one slide.
• Save the file as "style1382.ppt." This way you always know what style it is and you can easily access all of the images to edit them.
• Once you have the images saved, use the technique that I described in the previous post and create custom images.

Here are some additional tips:

• Don’t be afraid to play around and see what happens.
• You can change heads (or other body parts) on the characters.
• If you need a specific ethnicity, change the skin color or eye shape.
• Modify the clothes. You can change the colors or get rid of the "business look" by taking out the ties and white shirts.

Before & After Examples

I’ve included some before and after examples to whet your appetite. By applying my surgical expertise, these two images become a visual metaphor for chasing profits.

The image below demonstrates what we learned from the previous post. I ungrouped the image, took out what I didn’t need, and changed the color of her outfit. She went from being a soldier to a happy college student.

There’s no reason why you can’t mix and match body parts or facial expression to get the exact pose or look you want. All you need is a blank face, and you can drop any expression you want onto it.

In fact, I’ll go through all of the images from a style group, pull out the facial expressions, and put them on a blank slide. This way I have quick access to the expressions I need.

Here’s a quick way to create images for your next pirate rehabilitation course.

The image below is a combination of the same style (1382). I changed the map reader from male to female using the hair and body shape from the original female image.

When you use the same style, it is easy to create images that meet your specific needs and look like they belong together. It’ll make your project look that much more polished and professional.

Here is a quick makeover of the first image above. I used style 1382 for all of the images. I modified the images and then I cleaned the screen up a little. This is a simple example. Combine this technique with some of the presentation concepts popular in books like Beyond Bullet Points and you can really create a powerful and effective elearning course.

Here are some of the styles I like to use when building courses:

• 1382
• 1541
• 1280
• 1368
• 1366

What styles do you like to use?

I look forward to seeing what you’re able to do. Next time, we’ll look at some simple ways to jazz up the images with a photo editing program.