Learning objectives
You can:
- Compute a column grid from a canvas size, a margin and a gutter, give the exact column width in inches, points and English Metric Units, and state which block spans land on column lines and which do not.
- Score a slide's alignment by counting edges that miss the grid inside a stated tolerance, express it as a rule score, and predict how much the score moves when a specific element is fixed.
- Apply the six placement operations in the correct order (span, size, align, distribute, cross-align, lock), and explain what breaks when distribute runs before sizes are equalised.
- Choose a margin and defend it against both the extra area a tighter margin buys and the amount a projector's overscan removes.
- Identify the three cases where optical alignment beats mathematical alignment, compute the correction each one needs, and state the size of that correction in points at a given type size.
- Build a four-level type scale from a base size and a ratio, check every adjacent pair against a minimum ratio, and reject a fifth level with the arithmetic rather than by feel.
- Rank the four devices that carry hierarchy (space, size, weight, colour), quantify the contrast each one supplies, and diagnose a slide that is using colour to do a job the type scale should have done.
- Size type for a room: given a screen width, a viewing distance and a point size, compute the angular size of a capital letter in arcminutes and say whether it clears the working threshold.
- Set a line length and a leading that keep a text block inside the readable measure, and compute the block's height so it fits the live area you have.
- Run a five-second glance test on your own slide, score it against your stated message, and use the result to decide whether the fix is typographic or editorial.
Prerequisites & connections
Builds on. PR1.01 owns the question of where a formatting decision is stored: the master, the layout, the placeholder, the theme font and the theme colour. Everything in the sections below assumes you can put a decision on a master and have it inherited, because a grid enforced by hand on 40 slides is not enforced at all. PR0.02 owns the tool itself: views, sections, file hygiene and the twenty shortcuts, including the ones that show and hide guides. PR0.01 owns the sequence that comes before any of this, which is takeaway, audience, decision, medium, artefact.
Feeds forward. PR1.03 takes the geometry taught here and applies it to objects that move: shapes, images, icons, groups, animation and the eight-item ship checklist. PR2.02 takes the colour role sketched here in one section and turns it into the full data-visualisation treatment: data ink, pre-attentive attributes, palettes, direct labelling and accessibility. PR2.03 takes the glance test and makes it a slide-level standard rather than a typographic check. PR3.01 builds diagrams on the same column grid, so a process flow and a chart share their edges. PR5.01 to PR5.03 assume a competent grid and a working type scale as the floor beneath their archetypes, and the capstone in PR7.01 grades against it.
Five neighbours own material that touches this one, and the boundaries are deliberate. PR2.02 owns colour and decluttering as data-visualisation craft, including the accent formula, palette type and the accessibility check; the one colour section below states only enough to keep the geometry sections honest and hands the subject over. PR2.01 owns chart form choice, so no section here argues about bar against line. PR1.01 owns masters, layouts and templates, so the grid below is specified as numbers and the storage of those numbers belongs there. PR1.03 owns shape mechanics, grouping and the selection pane, which is why the sections below place rectangles and say nothing about how to draw them. M10.03 owns the written analyst deliverables, where line length and type scale also apply but at a reading distance of arm's length rather than nine metres, which changes every number.