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I was asked once to design a cover for a training manual, and I agreed, not really knowing what program I could use. I didn’t have any of the fancy image editing programs, such as, Fireworks or Photoshop. I agreed thinking that I would use Microsoft Word, but then I had an idea, why not use Microsoft PowerPoint? I had used it to create fantastic looking presentations, so why not a cover for a booklet that would be printed. I had access to the company’s pictures and logos, so the only thing needed was my own design inspiration. In the end, my design was such a hit that it was submitted to an advertising company and used for a whole line of training materials. So, for initial design efforts, Microsoft PowerPoint is a jewel in disguise. In this tutorial, I will show you how to design and create a booklet cover using Microsoft PowerPoint.

For this tutorial, we’ll continue using fictitious data from the fictitious company, Happy Tummies – a restaurant chain. You were asked to create a booklet cover for a new customer service training that is being developed in-house by the training professionals. The company does not have extra budget to hire an advertising/marketing company to do the design and the marketing department is booked with projects and cannot lend a hand, so the director of training has asked you, a Training Coordinator to design a booklet cover containing the following key elements: title, subtitle, logo, artwork and simple color design scheme. You only have two days to do this and submit the design for review and you only have access to Microsoft Suite. You decide to use Microsoft PowerPoint for your creation.

Let’s Get Started!

1. Go to Start>Programs>Microsoft PowerPoint to open the application. Then, go to Start>New to open a new presentation, select a “blank presentation” and go to File>Save as and save the new file– give it an easy name that you will remember, like “Happy Tummies Customer Service Training.”

Please Note: Because we are using PowerPoint please ensure you use art work items that are low resolution, since these take less time to print.

2. After selecting a new “Blank” presentation with no formatting, go to File>Page Setup and select the “Portrait” view under Orientation>Slides since the booklet will have this regular paper size.

Please Note that you should have the company’s logo already saved in a separate folder along with any artwork that you are planning to use. I would recommend you save them as a jpeg or gif file and save them in a separate folder called “Booklet Artwork” – just to make your life easier.

3. In this step, we’ll go ahead and insert the company logo. Go to Insert>Picture>From File, select the jpeg file called “Happy Tummies Color Logo” located in the “Happy Tummies Customer Training” folder. The image will be inserted into your document, select it and drag it to the lower left hand corner, and resize it to a smaller size of about half an inch. It should look like the second image below

4. Go to Insert>Text Box to insert a new text box. Once the new text box appears, click on the text box, and right click it, go to down to “format text box” and select it. A pop up window menu called “Format Text Box” will appear, click on the “Colors and Lines” tab, under “Fill” click on the color drop down arrow, a series of color option squares will appear, select the last square on the second column, the color “Tan.” Now click again on the “Fill” color drop down arrow box and go down to “Fill Effects,” a “Fill Effects” pop up menu window will appear, click on the “Gradient” tab, and go down to “Shading Styles” and select “Vertical” and click OK. This will create a shading effect which looks really nice on paper. Now you hit enter a couple of time so that the text box enlarges until it takes up about half of the page.

5. Go to Insert>Text Box, and place the new text box to the upper right hand corner and type in the title of the training “Customer Service 2007.” Then, format the font to Tahoma, 32 pt., black bold. It should look like the image below.

6. Now, we’ll insert a subtitle following the same steps as before, go to Insert>Text Box, enter the subtitle “We Aim to Please Campaign” – format the font to Tahoma, 20pt, bold black and place it just under the main title toward the upper right hand corner.

7. Now we’ll add one more piece of artwork. Go to Insert>Picture>From File, select the jpeg file called “Customer Service Art” located in the “Happy Tummies Customer Training” folder. The image will be inserted into your document, select it and move it to the right of the document just under the document subtitle “We Aim to Please Campaign” and place it about the middle of the document. The artwork should cover some of the upper half formatted part of the document and the white bottom half of the document.

8. Now you need to “group” all these different elements in the document together so that they are treated as one unit. Place the cursor to the furthermost point in the upper left hand corner of the document, left click and drag the cursor moving toward the furthermost point to the lower right hand corner – it looks as if you are creating an imaginary rectangle encompassing all the new elements within the document. You will notice that all the items in the document (all text boxes and art work) seemed to be selected because that is what you just did, you select it all the items. Now go to the lower left hand corner of your screen, click on the bottom tool bar called “Draw” and select “Group.” Now, when you click on the document, all the design elements that you created can be moved and formatted as one.

9. Go to File>Print Preview to view the document before printing it – if it looks good then go ahead and print one test page to ensure that it looks OK on the printed paper. Many times a design can look good on the computer screen and different once is printed because the color and shading may vary, so a good rule of thumb is to print one test page to review the design, colors, art work, text and size of all the elements. Also, time how long it takes to print – if you used low resolution artwork it should print quickly.

Please Note that if you are going to mass produced the cover, then it would be most cost effective to get quotes from professional printers, such as, Kinko’s. You would provide them with a copy of the file saved in PowerPoint and they will convert it to a program specifically for mass printing.
Well Done! Wasn’t it fun exercising your own creative juices using a regular application like Microsoft PowerPoint – Not to mention that you saved your company money, time and resources. If you enjoy this kind of design work, you should think about learning to use some of the more advanced image editor programs, such as, Fireworks or Photoshop. These of course, are more sophisticated, but can be great fun too. Please stay tuned, we’ll be adding some of these fun tutorials in the near future.

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