Best Practices for SmartArt Developers

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This topic provides general design guidelines for creating SmartArt templates.

Shape Size

In general, you should design graphics to fill the canvas while preserving an aspect ratio that best meets the design. This means that the graphic width, the graphic height, or both should touch the edges of the canvas.

Shape Text

Text should provide the largest font size while maintaining the graphic appearance. You should avoid spilling text outside the shape. Default text placement is centered if there is no child text. If there is child text, text is placed in the upper left by default.

Font Size

You should try to maintain a consistent font size in the graphic across similar shapes. Use the primFontSz constraint at a common parent layout node to accomplish this. Most graphics should have a child font size that is less than or equal to the parent font size.

See Also

Concepts

SmartArt Concepts