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

After I posted the finished version of the slides from my Intergraph interview yesterday a few of you asked to see the “before” version to see how things changed. I thought that sounded like a good idea, so here they are.

And once again, here are the completed slides.

A few months ago I interviewed for a job at Intergraph, a large software company in Huntsville, Alabama. As part of that interview, each of the candidates were given a test project to redesign the company’s corporate overview. This was my submission. I ended up getting the job. :^)

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?

As an aspiring professional designer with no “formal” training, I’m constantly on the lookout for books, movies, magazines, and blog posts about design to feed my desire to learn as much as I can about it. The four films listed below are among my favorite design-documentaries. They’re very entertaining, but they also all teach you a good bit about design history, practical design theory, and about some of the great designers of the past and today. If you’re a designer or just interested in learning more about design, I highly recommend all four.

1. Objectified

In this documentary, director Gary Hustwit explores the world of industrial design, or the design of everyday things. We often overlook the fact that nearly every object we come in contact with everyday, from bathtub stoppers to coffee cup lids, were all designed by someone. Someone had to think about that object. This film was eye opening in that it revealed just how much work and thought can go into the creation of things as seemingly simple as a potato peeler. Features interviews with Paola Antonelli, Jonathan Ive, and Dieter Rams, just to name a few.

Image from ObjectifiedFilm.com

2. Art & Copy

A film about advertising and inspiration, this film features interviews with some of the advertising worlds most prominent figures including George Lois, Lee Clow, Mary Wells, and Hal Riney. It explores some of the most famous ad campaigns of recent years including “Got Milk?”, “Where’s the beef?”, “Think Different” and more. This is a real gem for anyone interested in commercial advertising, but it’s full of valuable information for anyone interested in the thought and process behind big creative projects.

Image from IMDB.com

3. Milton Glaser: To Inform and Delight

This film profiles Milton Glaser, the iconic graphic designer perhaps most famously remembered for the “I [heart] NY” logo. Lots of insight into Glaser’s thought processes, and into the life of this living legend of design. Glaser is charming throughout and this documentary plays out like a long conversation with a good friend. The insights he shares are fascinating in their simplicity and poignancy. This film would benefit anyone who engages in any kind of creative work.

Image from IMDB.com

4. Helvetica

Another film by Gary Hustwit is a tribute to a typeface, which one of the interviewees describes as “like air” in that it’s all around you wherever you go. It looks at the history of the typeface, it’s many applications, and the various opinions of today’s designers which run the full gamut from love to hate. Even if you’ve never noticed it before (or at least didn’t have a name for it) after watching this film the Helvetica typeface will jump out to you everywhere from Gap advertisements to street signs.

Image from IMDB.com

Doctor’s need to have an encyclopedic knowledge of medicine. But to be a good doctor your expertise really can’t end there. You need to understand people and be sensitive and kind in your bedside manner. And it would probably behoove you to have some business sense if you ever decide to open your own practice. While you might be able to get along without these skills having them certainly helps.

I think most professions are like this. There are the requisite skills that you absolutely must have to perform the job, but there are countless other nice-to-haves that will make you much more effective. And I think there are some skills that are helpful no matter which profession you choose.

Of course, I’m gonna tell you that communication is one of those nice-to-haves no matter who you are or what you do. And I truly believe that. I think everyone will at some point in their career need to communicate an idea to their customers, managers, or colleagues. And it’s probably best not to wait to develop communication skills until you need them.

What are you doing to improve your communication skills right now? Even if you were a great communicator once, you can’t just let those skills sit on the shelf and expect to dust them off and use them effectively later. If you’re not working to improve them, they’re going to atrophy just like a muscle.

Work on your writing and written/verbal communication skills, and work on visual communication, too. In today’s world of Photoshop and ubiquitous HD video, the ability to communicate in images is increasingly in demand and certainly helpful. And also work on your oral communication skills. While you might be able to send a memo or spreadsheet to your boss to communicate your new idea, almost all big decisions get made based on a face to face conversation or presentation.

The time you spend becoming a more effective communicator will pay off. It’s an investment in yourself and in your future.

Do you have a story of how communication skills gave you an edge in your personal or professional life?

Salman Khan is the founder of Khan Academy, a website where you can learn just about anything for free.

The following is a quote from his TED talk (watch it in full below) when Salman is explaining his cousins’ feedback after receiving his tutoring via a YouTube video instead of face to face:

“They told me that they preferred me on YouTube than in person…They preferred the automated version of their cousin to their cousin. At first that’s very unintuitive, but when you actually think about it from their point of view it makes a ton of sense. You have this situation where now they can pause and repeat their cousin without feeling like they’re wasting my time. If they have to review something that they should have learned a couple of years ago or maybe a couple of years ago they don’t have to be embarrassed and ask their cousin. They can just watch those videos.

“If they’re bored they can go ahead, they can watch it at their own time at their own pace. And probably the least appreciated aspect of this is the notion that the very first time that you’re trying to get your brain around a new concept, the very last thing you need is another human being saying do you understand this.”

So much of what he says makes sense.

And I love Sal’s story. Stumbling on a great thing, turning it into a company, quitting his job, adoption by school systems…

Just amazing. Is this the future of education? Could you get your GED simply by taking Khan Academy classes for free? Could college educations eventually be free online, too? This is just another example of video on the internet is driving innovation and has the power to transform entire industries.

(via swiss-miss)