Presentation Zen [48]
Alignment
The whole point of the alignment principle is that nothing in your slide design should look as if it were placed there randomly. Every element is connected visually via an invisible line. Where repetition is more concerned with elements across a deck of slides, alignment is about obtaining unity among elements of a single slide. Even elements that are quite far apart on a slide should have a visual connection, something that is easier to achieve with the use of grids. When you place elements on a slide, try to align them with another element.
Many people fail to make an effort to apply the alignment principle, which often results in elements being almost aligned but not quite. This may not seem like a big deal, but these kinds of slides look less sophisticated and overall less professional. The audience may not be conscious of it, but slides that contain elements in alignment look cleaner. And assuming other principles are applied harmoniously as well, your slides should be easier to understand quickly.
Proximity
The principle of proximity is about moving things closer or farther apart to achieve a more organized look. The principle says that related items should be grouped together so that they will be viewed as a group, rather than as several unrelated elements. Audiences will assume that items that are not near each other in a design are not closely related. Audiences will naturally tend to group similar items that are near to each other into a single unit.
People should never have to “work” at trying to figure out which caption goes with which graphic or whether or not a line of text is a subtitle or a line of text unrelated to the title. Do not make audiences think. That is, do not make them “think” about the wrong stuff, like trying to decipher your slide’s organization and design priority. A slide is not a page in a book or magazine, so you are not going to have more than a few elements or groups of elements. Robin Williams, in her best-selling book The Non-Designer’s Design Book (Peachpit Press) says that we must be conscious of where our eye goes first when we step back and look at our design. When you look at your slide, notice where your eye is drawn first, second, and so on. What path does your eye take?
This title slide lacks a design priority. Due to poor use of alignment and proximity the slide seems to contain five different elements.
This slide uses symmetrical balance and better proximity, with related items now clearly together. Greater contrast is also achieved by adjusting type size and color to give the design a clear priority.
The two slides below show that by aligning all elements flush right, a strong invisible line is created on the right side that ties all elements together in a way that is more interesting than the more common symmetrical title. Type and color are adjusted to create greater contrast and interest. The red dot in the title ties in with the red logo at the bottom…
This side looks busier due to the abrupt contrast between the background color of the images.
By aligning the text and the photos and making the image backgrounds transparent (in this case by simply changing the slide background to white) the slide is much cleaner and “noise” is reduced.
The background image on the slide has too much salience, making the title hard to see…
Choosing a more appropriate background image that allows the text to remain clearly in the foreground and grouping the text lines makes for a stronger title slide.
By making the background of the fish photo seem transparent (again by changing the slide background color in this case) the image and text blend together harmoniously into a more unified visual.