The Visual Word: Making Documents Look Great

Opportunities to Use Graphics Effectively

Every year, your documents must compete for attention in an increasingly sophisticated visual environment. Using Times New Roman and Arial fonts isn't enough anymore; today's best documents are visually rich, incorporating high-quality graphics and various other visual techniques. This chapter focuses on Word's powerful capabilities and resources for importing and using graphics—along with some "dos and don'ts" for using graphics effectively.

Word permits you to add virtually any image to a document:

• Images you capture with a digital camera or scanner

• Images provided by your organization, such as company logos

• Bitmapped images you create or edit using software such as Adobe Photoshop or JASC Paint Shop Pro, or that you adjust and import from Microsoft Office Picture Manager, a new application included with Microsoft Office 2003

• Vector images you create or edit using software such as Adobe Illustrator

• Vector images you import from Microsoft Word and Microsoft Office's built-in Clip Art library, or clip art Microsoft provides on its Web site

Before going further, you may find it valuable to perform a brief inventory of your graphics resources and the opportunities you may have to improve your documents through the use of graphics:

• Can you more effectively promote your corporate identity by adding your corporate logo or signature to more of your forms and documents?

• Do you create documents that would benefit from directly relevant photographs? For example, if you appraise real estate, would it improve your reports to include scanned photos, or photos taken on a digital camera of homes and properties?

• Would it save you time to send documents by fax directly from your computer, rather than printing them on stationery? If so, consider creating stationery templates that incorporate your logo and scanned digital signatures that can easily be imported into your documents.

• Are your newsletters and other customer communications too "gray"—all text and headlines, with no visuals to keep your reader's attention? Consider using a mix of original photography and digital clip art resources available through Microsoft Office Online, other Web sites, and low-cost CD-ROMs.

All these scenarios and options are covered in this chapter.

Finding and Inserting Images Through the Clip Art Task Pane

Microsoft Word and Office come with their own library of clip art, as well as two related tools for accessing it: the Clip Art task pane and the Microsoft Clip Organizer applet.

Finding Other Sources of Images

You may find that the clip art you need cannot be found on the Office CD-ROM, or even at Microsoft Office Online. Fortunately, many other sources of clip art are available. In the following sections, we review two of them: clip art libraries available on CD-ROM, and non-Microsoft Web resources.

Editing Images to Serve Your Needs

Regardless of how you've inserted images into your documents, you may need to modify them to serve your needs more effectively.

At the least, you'll probably need to reposition and perhaps resize your images to integrate them into your document. However, you can do much more. Graphics can be cropped, brightened, recolored, and even redrawn. You can also adjust how graphics work with other page elements.

Positioning and Sizing Images

Before you insert an image, you position your insertion point where you want the image to appear. Still, it's likely that you'll have to make adjustments to the image's size or position after it is placed in your document. The next few sections show you how.

Adding Alternative Text to Your Image If you're creating Web pages, always include alternative text that can appear in place of images. Alternative text appears in the following circumstances: When a Web page is displayed in a browser with images turned off (to increase speed) When a Web page is displayed in a browser customized for an individual with a visual disability (the alternative text can be read aloud by the computer, whereas an image cannot) When an image cannot be accessed from the Web server In Internet Explorer, as a ScreenTip that can be used to explain an image

Understanding How Word Drawings Work

Before you start working with Word's drawing tools, it's helpful to understand the types of images they create. Word's drawing tools create vector graphics. This is to say that they create digital images through commands and mathematical statements that instruct your computer where to place points, lines, and shapes. This is in contrast to bitmapped graphics, such as digital photos, which simply assign color data to each pixel in an image. Vector graphics have two important advantages over bitmapped graphics. First, they can be enlarged or stretched without blurring. Second, they are generally far smaller, leading to smaller files.

Word calls its vector graphics drawing objects. These drawing objects can be edited separately or grouped so that they can be edited together. They can also be layered so that some components of your drawing appear "on top of" others. You'll learn how to use the grouping and layering tools later in the chapter.

Because Word drawing objects are made of lines and shapes, you can often edit drawings to remove elements you don't need and add elements you do want.

Controlling Colors Without color, your drawing objects are merely outlines. Word enables you to choose from a full range of colors—including shades of gray—to fill your objects, change your borders, and modify your text. In addition, you can fill your shapes with multicolor gradient blends, preset textures, and even user-selectable pictures. CAUTION Not all printers and monitors accurately reproduce the colors you choose. If accurate color is important, print a test copy, or display a test file using the monitor/printer combination where you expect your document to be viewed. Changing Fills and Line Colors Shapes you create with Word's drawing tools (except for lines and arrows) have two parts that can be colored. Although the interior fill color is the most obvious, you can also control the border color separately. The easiest way to change a fill or line color is by clicking the correct button on the Drawing toolbar. The Fill Color and Line Color buttons both have option arrows that open similar Color menus with 40 color swatches and extended options. Click any of the onscreen colors to change either the fill or the line color of your selected drawing object. Clicking the No Fill or No Line options makes those respective choices transparent.

Word 2003: Almost a Full-Fledged Desktop Publishing Program What program comes with the capability to create multicolumn layouts, smoothly import any kind of graphics, use slick design techniques such as drop caps, and even embed fonts for delivery to a professional printer? It's the same program that provides built-in brochure designs, custom fonts, clip art images, and drawing and font effects software. Yes, Word 2003 does all that.

Using Publication Layouts from Microsoft Office Online

Microsoft provides a growing collection of publication templates through the Microsoft Office Online Web site. To choose "desktop publishing" templates for Word, do this:

1. Choose File, New.

2. In the New Document Task Pane, click Templates Home Page. Internet Explorer displays the Microsoft Office Online home page.

3. Click Marketing Materials (in the Marketing section).

4. Browse among the brochures, booklets, ads, flyers, posters, print and email newsletters, and other materials provided there. Templates with the Microsoft Word icon are designed for Word; other templates are designed for Publisher and other Office programs.

5. Click the Hyperlink of the template you want.

6. On the next screen, click Download Now.

7. Click Accept to accept Microsoft's License Agreement.

8. Click Continue. Word reopens, showing a new document based on the template you downloaded.