Organisation charts

Hi Claire, thanks for your query. This is very much a personal/situational question. Personally, I think SmartArt is good for quick, one-off, charts but it is too directive. Really large organisations would have presentation operators who could quickly create an org chart from scratch using autoshapes and alignment tools, resulting in something much more customised and closely aligned to brand guidelines. No presentations operator worth their salt would rely on SmartArt, beyond as an inspiration or a quick "get it out the door" tool.

I haven't come across any company yet that has implemented customised SmartArt yet as part of their presentations. It is possible, but you're still working from Microsofts bland examples, when what you really want if you're doing a presentation is originality of vision and total control over the imagery. However, if I was going to go down this route I would create a library of potential SmartArt slides for staff and roll out some training in how to use SmartArt. A lot of people would embrace that rather than fiddling with autoshapes!

Hope this helps,

Anthony