Create your custom post-it note in Power Point
Post-it notes are still popular in a lot of e-learning interactions like drag and drop or multiple
response. They’re nice and easy way of holding content, where text is often presented by handwritten font. To make it look more real just fold down a corner of the note, add some shadow underneath and fill the shape with any color you want.
There are a lot of pages you can download these notes for free but..the satisfaction of creating something by yourself is worth spending less than 1,5 minute of designing in PowerPoint (it’s really quick - it took me 80 seconds – you can watch it here).
So here are 4 easy-to-follow steps in creating a custom post-it note:
Draw a square, then click it right and select EDIT POINTS, then move the corners and points a little bit so you get a quite unique and interesting shape.
Create another shape (square or a rectangle) and place it where you’d like to have the corner to be folded. Select both shapes (the order of selecting is important, so first select the note, then the new shape) and use SUBTRACT from MERGE SHAPES group (if you don’t have this group anywhere in your tabs/quick access tool bar, go to Customize quick access toolbar/More commands/All commands/Merge shapes, select ADD and click OK.
Create a triangle and place it nicely in the corner you’ve just cut. Fill it with slightly darker color than the base of your note (adding gradient fill is also a nice touch). There's also an alternative option to step 2 where you can use Fragment instead of Subtract where a ready to use rectangle will be created as an output of this combination, so there would be no need for step 3 in this process.
To add a shadow underneath: copy the note, fill it with black/dark gray, then in SHAPE EFFECTS, select SOFT EDGES, 25 points. Send the shadow to back of the note, change its opacity, resize it, edit its points if needed. Group everything and your post-it note is ready to use.
This is how a basic note is created but you can go into variety of papers like: ruled line or graph-ruled note, a piece of paper torn out from spiral notepad or add colored semi transparent adhesive tape pieces onto it – your imagination is the limit.
Here are 8 designs of different post-it notes I’ve created as a freebie in PowerPoint (freebie 16). They are all customisable, so feel free to resize, recolor and reuse in any e-learning project. Enjoy!
