I listened to an interview today with Chris Anderson, the former editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine. Chris is now the CEO of 3D Robotics, a company that designs, builds, and sells unmanned air vehicles, or drones, to various military and civilian clients for a fraction of the cost that large aerospace companies charge. They manage this by taking advantage of the way that digital technologies (open-source CAD software, 3D printers, and iPhone processors and accelerometers, for instance) are revolutionizing the manufacturing industry.

At one point in the interview the interviewer asked Mr. Anderson if he was worried that what they were doing was so easy that someone listening to the podcast could get the same tools, order from the same suppliers, and compete with him. Chris’ answer was interesting.

He said that he wasn’t worried about that at all.

In fact, he actually recently published a book about how he and his team do what they do, encouraging people to join the DIY drone community.

The manufacturing world used to be hard to learn, and even harder to master. The digital revolution has made it easy for anyone to learn, but the mastery part is still tricky. Chris and his team aren’t worried about the democratization of the tools, because access to the tools isn’t what makes what they do valuable.

Think about painting. Anyone can go to their local art supply store and pick up high-quality paint supplies for a fairly low price. We can get books about painting from the library, and take a class on it at the Y. The cost of entry is very low. The tools of painting are available to everyone. And it’s been that way for a long time.

But the fact that everyone has access to the trappings of a master painter, doesn’t make the ability to paint a masterpiece any less valuable. Having access to the tools is different than the ability to produce something of value with those tools.

It’s easier than ever to get your hands on the tools of graphic design and presenting. For a few bucks a month you can lease Adobe’s Creative Suite. Every business person in the world has PowerPoint installed on their computer. But having the tools is different from being able to produce quality slides or give a compelling presentation.

It’s that ability to wield the tools that is so valuable. And that ability still takes time and commitment to develop.

In the modern digital world, everyone can be a manufacturer, painter, master presenter. But not everyone will.

Will you?

I’m in the process of updating the look of Advance Your Slides. The new site should be in place soon. Please bear with me until then.

-Nick Smith

When you believe in things you don’t understand,
Then you suffer,
Supersition ain’t the way.
– Stevie Wonder

The late, great Mark Twain is quoted as having once said, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” This is almost certainly the case with PowerPoint.

Many of the commonly understood and accepted ways to use PowerPoint are wrong. They’re superstitions that we all believe in (or believed in at one time) for no other reason than everyone else believes in them, too. Five years ago, we all believed our smartphones were really smart. It wasn’t until Apple unveiled the iPhone that we had our first glimpse of what could be. After that, we weren’t satisfied with the status quo we had contented ourselves with just hours before.

Some prevalent PowerPoint Superstitions include:

• Add bullet points until the text box is full.
• Use images to fill up whatever whitespace is left after adding your text.
• It’s good to use lots of different fonts on every slide. People like variety.
• If you decide to make a portion of text bold, it’s good to underline and italicize, too. Extra points for changing its color.
• Random transitions give your presentation the extra-special edginess of uncertainty.

The problem here isn’t that people don’t know what rules to follow. It isn’t that we don’t require everyone to study design in school (although this isn’t a bad idea). It isn’t that there’s no one speaking up about how to do slides a better way.

The problem is that people aren’t aware of the problem. They think they know what they’re doing. They think this is how PowerPoint is supposed to be done. And since they don’t see a problem, they’re not searching for a solution.

I’d like to take just a few minutes to introduce you to a really useful little set of commands in PowerPoint that you may have overlooked in the past: the alignment commands. These are located on the Home tab, in the Drawing section, under the Arrange button.

Ordering Objects

The image to the left displays the list of commands you’ll see when you click the Arrange button. The first four commands, under the Order Objects heading, control the stack order of the elements on the slide. My guess is that if you’ve spent any time at all with PowerPoint, you’re already familiar with these four commands. Bring Forward and Send Backward increase or decrease respectively an element’s position in the stack by one, while Bring to Front or Send to Back move the object all the way to the top or bottom of the stack. But you knew that already.

Sidebar: Did you further know you can use the Selection Pane… command to open a pane that will let you edit the stack order manually? Give it a try sometime.

Grouping Objects

The next three commands, under the Group Objects heading, I assume you know as well. Group, Ungroup, and Regroup allow you to create collections of objects that will behave as one object until released.

Aligning Objects

It’s the next command I’d like to tell you about today. Under the Position Objects heading is a command called Align which has a fly out menu with several options in it, which you can see to the right.

These commands allow you to fine tune the positioning of anything on the slide. The first three commands control horizontal (left and right) alignment, and the following three control the vertical (up and down). This positioning is dynamic, meaning that it changes based on how many objects are selected. If only one object is selected, the object will be aligned to the slide. If two or more objects are selected the objects will be positioned relative to each other.

For example, if only one object is selected when you choose the Align Left command, the left-hand side of the selected object will be moved into alignment with the left-hand side of the slide. If two or more objects are selected when you choose Align Left, then the left-hand side of all the objects will be aligned with the left-hand side of the left-most object. If you want to override this default change in behavior at any time, you can do so by toggling the check box on the menu from Align to Slide to Align Selected Objects, or vice versa.

Align Left, Align Center, and Align Right will only change objects’ horizontal positions. It will not move them up or down at all. Similarly Align Top, Align Middle, and Align Bottom, will only change vertical positons. So if your goal was to have two objects line up right on top of each other, you’d have to choose two commands, Align Center followed by Align Middle or vice-versa.

Distributing Objects

The next two commands, Distribute Horizontally and Distribute Vertically, allow you to space objects evenly between to points. For instance, when you choose Distribute Horizontally, the left-most and right-most objects will not be effected, and the rest of the selected objects will be spaced evenly between the two. These commands only work when three or more objects are selected.

Aligning or Distributing Groups

The alignment commands also work on groups. Suppose you have your objects just the way you want them, but they’re slightly off center. Rather than trying to move them each over a few nudges at a time, you could create a group out of all the objects, align the whole group to the center, then release the group with the Ungroup command.

Alignment is one of the easiest ways to sharpen up the look of your slides. Take some time to experiment with the Align menu and learn how it’s commands behave in various situations. Of course you could always align objects by hand, nudging and positioning things until you have it just right, but learning to use the align tools can be a real time saving trick.

I get scared every time I get a new project to work on.

No matter how many projects I’ve done before. No matter how confident I am that I can do the work. Every single time I’ve done anything creative, I get panicky. And stressed. And feel like quitting before I even get started. Just like Han in the trash compactor on the Death Star, I have a bad feeling about this.

I get scared because I have no idea what I’m going to do. As I sit listening to the person I’m working with describe their problem or presentation idea or whatever, some little voice inside me thinks I ought to be able to spit out a really great, well-developed idea as soon as they stop speaking. They’ve come to me because I have good ideas. Now’s the time I better produce them, and by the bushel.

I know in my head that no creative project works this way. I know that once I dig in and start brainstorming that I’ll go through lots of bad ideas, and iterations, and revisions before I finally hit on an idea that’s truly a good solution. But despite this knowledge, my stomach still ties itself in knots every time I start a new project. Every time.

I guess learning to deal with that feeling is part of getting good at being creative. I don’t like it any more now than the first time I felt it, but I accept it, let it wash over me for a few seconds, then push past it and get to work. I don’t let it stop me from starting anymore. And I think that’s the first step.

Also, I’m kind of leery now of any projects I start that don’t cause me to feel this way at first. Usually a lack of that feeling means that I’ve done something like this before and I’m not challenging myself enough. It’s comfortable, and while that might feel nice, it also means I’m not gonna learn anything new on this one. It’s an indicator that I’m spinning my wheels. So in that sense, that terrible feeling is kind of like a compass. When I hear about a project and start to get that sinking feeling I know that’s what I need to be doing. I know it sounds funny but sometimes I get excited about a project just because of how scared it makes me.

I should also mention that I’ve never been unable to figure out a solution to any of the problems or projects that seemed so daunting and insurmountable at first. Eventually I can work through them. I guess my head just makes them seem much, much worse than they actually are. That’s another good reason to just push through the fear and get to work.

How about you? Do you ever feel this way?