Add High-Quality Illustrations to Your Documents with Office 2007's SmartArt

Even though I consider myself a good writer (better than Rick, at least), I freely admit to having virtually no sense of graphic design. Since I'm all thumbs with design software, I love using Microsoft Office's SmartArt to inject simple but professional graphics into my documents and presentations. If you're new to this feature, you'll appreciate the tutorial at Online Tech Tips on using SmartArt.

In a nutshell, SmartArt lets you choose from about 100 different templates -- with lists, charts, arrows, process and workflow diagrams, and so on -- and then enter text and fine-tune the colors, sizes, and shapes.

To get started, open Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, click the Insert tab, and then click SmartArt. Choose a graphic style and then add your text.

Remember that your SmartArt is fully customizable; if you want four text bullets but the style you chose only has three text boxes, press Enter to add a new box. You can resize the entire graphic or selectively adjust just some elements in the image. When you're done, your graphic can look entirely original, so no one will think, "Oh, that's just the standard Word clipart." [via Lifehacker]