I don’t claim to be a professional graphics guy because I was never formally trained. Some may argue otherwise, but I often wonder how much better my skills would be if I were. Nah…it’s more fun with no rules!

That being said, I am my own worst critic and there are thousands out there that can do this stuff better than me. At the same time, I am constantly asked how to do certain things that just seem obvious or natural to me. The more I thought about it, the more I realized there are probably more folks who don’t know how to manipulate graphics or the tools used to produce them than there are that do.

This tutorial was inspired by a project on “How to Write Effective Business Letters.” I wanted that vintage look and feel an old typewriter portrays, but I didn’t like the default PowerPoint typewriter effect. So I tinkered around a bit and put a new twist on this old favorite.

Note: This effect takes some time to setup. It took me roughly and hour to produce this single slide. Now that it’s built, I can reuse it in the future. Hope this helps at least to inspire others to bend the rules a bit!