One of the things that differentiates professional design from “throw-items-on-the-screen” design (rookie design) is how well items align with each other. Alignment is one of the four major principles of visual design that Robin Williams discusses in her terrific book, The Non-Designer’s Design Book (read it, if you haven’t already!).
In that book, Williams says, “…nothing should be placed … arbitrarily. Every item should have a visual connection with something else…”
She explains that alignment between items that are physically separated connects these items in your mind via an invisible line. It tells your mind that they belong together.
In the rest of this article, I’ll discuss how to use PowerPoint alignment tools to make the placement of slide items look more professional in preparation for pulling the slides into an eLearning authoring program (the same principles obviously work for preparing presentations, too). Throughout the article, I’m using PowerPoint 2010 and showing PowerPoint 2010 screenshots. PowerPoint 2007 works almost identically.
Arrange Me
Because alignment is such a critical design concept, PowerPoint provides a set of positioning tools that you can reach from the Home tab (Drawing group) and also the Drawing and Picture tabs (Drawing group) when either of these context-sensitive tabs are activated. Figure 1 shows the Align menu and the positioning options that are possible using this menu.
Figure 1 - Arrange menu in PowerPoint 2007/2010
Figure 2 shows menu buttons built in PowerPoint for an eLearning time-management course and placed on a slide. See a problem? They’re not lined up. Not even close.
Figure 2 - Menu buttons for a time management course, not aligned
To align them, I selected them all, and from the Arrange menu, I selected Align?Align Middle. I then selected Align ?Distribute Horizontally so they are evenly spaced, horizontally. Much better! (Figure 3) Because these settings are often confusing, I briefly explain how each alignment setting works in Table 1.
Figure 3 - Menu buttons for a time management course, aligned
|
Setting |
What it does |
|
Align Left |
This setting lines up the left border of the objects. |
|
Align Center |
This setting lines up the center of the objects vertically. |
|
Align Right |
This setting lines up the right borders of the objects. |
|
Align Top |
This setting lines up the top border of the objects. |
|
Align Middle |
This setting lines up the center of the objects horizontally. |
|
Align Bottom |
This setting lines up the bottom borders of the objects. |
|
Distribute Horizontally |
This setting evenly spaces out the objects horizontally. |
|
Distribute Vertically |
This setting evenly spaces out the objects vertically. |
