Creating decorative navigation buttons in PowerPoint 2007 is quite easy. All you have to do, really, is add a Bevel effect to a standard shape. The result looks pretty good on its own. You can do even better, though, by going a step further and adding a 3-color gradient fill to the beveled shape. That’s the approach we’ll take here. The result will look like Figure 1.

Open PowerPoint if it’s not already open. Before doing anything else, make a couple of adjustments to the standard slide. Delete the placeholder textboxes. They just get in the way. You want a completely blank slide. Then, right click the slide pane, choose Format Background, and change the background color to Black. That way the effects we create in the shape will show up a little better.

Next, add a shape to the slide pane by clicking the Insert tab on the Ribbon, clicking the Shapes button, clicking the Rounded Rectangle option in the list of available shapes (Figure 2), and finally clicking and dragging on the slide pane.

Remove the shape’s outline. We won’t need that. Do so by double-clicking the shape to assure the Drawing Tools Format tab on the Ribbon is active. Then click the Shape Outline button and select No Outline from the options.

Now, with the shape still selected, add a Bevel effect. Click the Shape Effects button, hold your cursor over the Bevel option, and then click the upper left bevel style called Circle (Figure 3). Click somewhere on the slide pane away from the shape to deselect it and observe its natural state without selection handles. See that it now has a three-dimensional appearance and already looks clickable. That’s good.

Let’s pretty it up a bit more, though, by adding a fill gradient. Click the shape again to select it. On the Drawing Tools Format tab, click the Shape Fill button. Next, hold your cursor over Gradient and click the More Gradients option at the bottom.

On the Format Shape dialog box that appears, toggle Gradient Fill. Your view probably looks something like Figure 4. Note, however, that if you’ve already assigned gradients to shapes on other occasions, PowerPoint may remember the last gradient you made and automatically assign that customized pattern to your shape here. In that case, your view may be different—but then again, that also probably means you already know how to work with gradients. If that’s true, adjust upcoming instructions accordingly to fit your situation.

Click the gray arrow next to Stop 1 in the Gradient Stops area. See that by default, three Stops exist here. A Stop represents a gradient color, along with that color’s position in the gradient spectrum. As such, right now our shape’s gradient contains three colors that fade from one to another across the shape. You can add many additional Stops if desired. In this tutorial, we’ll leave the number at three.

To create the look shown above, you need to adjust the Stops a bit. Click the Color button for Stop 1. Then click More Colors at bottom, click the Custom tab on the Colors dialogue box, and adjust the Stop 1 color to be a light pink (almost white). This action gives our button an appearance of bright glow on its upper edge.

Next, activate Stop 2 and adjust its color to be a very dark reddish purple. Before moving on to Stop 3, however, stay here and adjust Stop 2’s position. Click and drag its Stop Position slider left until the percentage at right displays as 25% instead of the initial 50%. This action has the effect of decreasing the amount of upper glow, in effect sharpening it and expanding the amount of lower purple color.

The last action is to change the Stop 3 color to be a bright reddish purple. This action gives the impression that the shape has a subtle internal glow, as though lit from within.

And there you have it, a decorative button. If desired, add a text label by simply clicking the shape to select it and typing desired text. Adjust the text color and size to compliment the shape’s look. The button is ready for a hyperlink.

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