Presentation Zen Design: Simple Design Principles and Techniques to Enhance Your Presentations (Voices That Matter)

by Garr Reynolds

The human eye is pretty good at spotting the vertical center of a visual. If the vertical center is just slightly off, a design may not look quite right. The rulers and guides in slideware allow you to perfectly center objects on the vertical axis. For this reason (and many others), it’s a good idea to display the rulers while you are working. For centering elements along the horizontal axis, however, it is acceptable to use your eye. The bottom half of a visual needs more weight, so if you center objects perfectly on the horizontal axis according to the rulers, it will actually seem a bit too low. This is why, for example, in many typefaces the number 8 and the capital S are usually a little fatter on the bottom.