Creating Visual Metaphors : Galaxy Diagram in PowerPoint

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Discover the power of simple metaphors to convey your business messages effectively. Follow the simple step by step instructions in this tutorial to create a useful galaxy diagram template.

Visual metaphors can convey your strategic messages effectively:

Sometimes, business presentations involving strategy and vision tend to be boring. It takes a lot of effort to engage the audience, when the subject is inherently dry.
One of the useful ways to grab and hold audience attention in such presentations is to use simple yet relevant metaphors. In this article, we will show you a useful example of using metaphors to contextualize your business ideas.

The metaphor diagram we will learn to create today:

The metaphor of planets revolving around the sun is quite useful to convey a variety of business concepts. Some of the concepts you can portray using the diagram are:

  • Business units aligned around organization’s vision
  • Services aligned around customer needs
  • Wealth Management products aligned around Investment philosophy etc.

Let us see how to create the diagram in a step by step way.

Step 1 The Basic Shape:

Draw an elliptical shape using ‘Donut’ tool in auto shapes menu. Make two more copies of the shape and paste them one on top of the other as follows:

Menu to Add Elipse i PowerPoint

Step 2 Create the Diagram:

Select one of the elliptical shapes. Right click ->Size and Position and rotate the shape to 60 Degrees.

Rotate Shape Men

Select another ellipse and rotate it to 120 Degrees. You will get the following result:

Basic Visual Metaphor of Galaxy
When you fill the shape with gray color and use Preset 2 under ‘Shape effects’ tab, you get the following result:

Metaphor Diagra
Now add three small glossy balls and one big glossy ball to serves as planets. Add a shadow to the big glossy ball at the center.
You can see tutorial to create glossy ball here >>

beautiful galaxy diagra
When you add relevant call outs and slide title, you get a useful PowerPoint chart diagram template as follows:
visual metaphors diagram

Related: Visual Metaphor Examples in PowerPoint

More interesting options for business presenters:

If you are interested in using more visual metaphors and creative diagrams for your business presentations, we recommend you to take a look at our ‘750+ PowerPoint Charts and Diagrams Pack for CEOs’. The pack has more than 750 insightful metaphors and diagrams to help you visualize any business idea imaginable.
The diagram templates are super easy to use. Just copy our diagrams to your slides and replace sample text. Your professional slide deck gets ready in minutes. Here are a few sample diagram templates from our CEO pack:

Strategy and Vision Template
Leadership diagram template from CEO pack

Source: Strategy Diagrams from PowerPoint CEO Pack

Source: PowerPoint Goals from CEO Pack

Why waste time creating your diagrams from the scratch, when you have such a high quality solution like ‘CEO pack’ available readily off the shelf?

Related: Visual Presentation Idea: Clock Diagram

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