Smart graphics for visual people
If you need a catchy title for your Visio diagram, then diamonds could be your best friend!
Today’s Visio SmartShape encases each character you type in it’s own individual diamond for that perfect Retro or Argyle look!
(Just what you were looking for, eh?)
Dave, won’t you please read this article?
Read this article, Dave.
Dave, don’t you think you should read this article?
Update Nov. 25th, 2016: The most “important” Apple Cup in a long, long time. 5th ranked Washington vs. #23 Washington State. WHOA NELLY!
GO DAWGS!
Edit 2015 01 02: Congratulations NFC West Division Winners!
Edit 2014 02.02: Congratulations SuperBowl XLVII Champions!
Logos are fun, especially sports team logos!
The Seattle Seahawks logo is also perfect for showing off how Visio SmartShape behavior can be not only useful but cool and attractive.
Come on in and find out!
The frenzied launch of Apple’s sadly-named iPad really highlights how big touch-based user interfaces are these days. If you are a UX designer or are working out user interfaces, then you’ll need to include touch gestures in your plans.
Luckily, John Goldsmith has just released an excellent stencil of Visio touch gesture shapes to help you lay out your ideas!
Web designers and AI folks need to know what colors they are using. And they need to know precisely.
Bright red, Fuchsia and Mauve just won’t do. They need exacting names like: #FF0000, #FF00FF and #E0B0FF.
Since more and more folks are using Visio for prototyping web sites and user interfaces, I thought it might be useful to create a SmartShape that displays the hexadecimal color value for a particular shape.
[Read more…] about Get Web Hex Color Values from Visio Shapes
Today I saw a question in the Microsoft Visio newsgroups.
Stefan wanted to know how to make a 3D arrow look like it was going through a rectangular plane.
Of course I couldn’t resist the opportunity to do some drawing, plus it seemed like a nice topic for today’s Visio 3D drawing tutorial!
While I was writing about the Visio Spectrum Shape the other day, I started thinking about the various ways that you could use this eyesore fabulous explosion of color in your own Visio SmartShapes.
While the spectrum offers a rainbow of tints, it only comes in one form: RECTANGLE. So what if you want to spice up some arrows, or circles, or…flowchart shapes?
A rainbow spectrum can really liven-up a diagram and clarify a point that you are trying to make.
Whether you are trying to illustrate a broad band of choices or options, talking about a range of electromagnetic wavelengths, or going for the happy feeling that a rainbow gives, a colorful spectrum can help clarify your message.
Visio does not have multi-stop gradient fills that make spectra a no-brainer to create. With clever formatting and grouping, however, you can build a passable spectrum shape. But why bother doing it yourself when we’ve got a pre-built shape, waiting for you to download (for free)?
A visible-light spectrum can be used to illustrate many concepts. A few that come to mind:
Whatever you want to illustrate, our Visio spectrum shape is easy to use and quick to deploy.
Since the spectrum colors can be a bit overwhelming, I’ve added a feature to quickly set transparency and soften the effect. Just right-click the Visio spectrum shape:
You can easily set four levels of transparency. They look like this:
All in all, it’s a pretty simple shape to use.
Once you have mastered the spectrum shape’s features, you possess the power to create vision-destroying graphics like this:
or this:
Sorry about that.
Stuff like this can be used to make sure your audience is paying attention when you present your next PowerPoint at Monday’s status meeting!
But if you must get real work done, then you could use the spectrum shape to enhance your business diagrams, as shown in this concoction:
or this one perhaps:
Enjoy the spectrum shape!
Download “Visio Spectrum Shape” s!Aj0wJuswNyXlhyiZlqlm5IuyTlsm – Downloaded 859200 times – 103.00 B
Tweet, tweet! Twitter is getting REAL BIG. No one is sure exactly what it is or…why. Attention deficit disorder gone nuts? The best source of at-the-moment trends? Customer data goldmine? Are we turning into chirping birds?
And all across the net, it’s raining word clouds! Clumps of words, where each has a different font-size or color to emphasize importance or frequency. Arranged this way and that to fill up the space, or to make a cool design. You’ll see them on blogs and on data-visualization sites everywhere.
Recently, occasional Visio-poster and creative guy in-general Saveen Reddy sent me an e-mail informing me that he had brought Twitter and Word Clouds together in the Visio arena.