Thanks to Ken Shelton My Slides Have Improved

Ken Shelton surrounded by
kids after his NCTIES keynote.

I have given dozens of presentations over the last year, thank you to everyone that has invited me to do so, and although the topics of the talks are similar I do mix up some of the tools I mention in each one. I also change up the slides a little bit for each talk. While my slides do the job of showing what I'm talking about, I was never 100% happy with some of them. That changed recently because of two simple suggestions that Ken Shelton gave in a talk about presentation design at NCTIES. 

Ken's two pieces of advice that I've put into immediate use are these. First, start taking a picture a day to build-up a library of images that you can use in your presentations. I've been doing this since I heard Ken say that. So far I've only used two of my own images, but I do have designs for using some of my others in the future talks. Second, Ken recommends using full-bleed on the images you place on slides. In other words, eliminate border space and if necessary place font over the image. That second piece of advice I'm using on 90% of my slides now. I am much happy with the look of my slides. 

Creating pretty slides is only one part of delivering a good presentation. There are many other elements to consider. For those elements take a look at this collection of Short and Sweet Presentation Tips and these ideas for shy presenters.