Better Presentations

I make a fair bit of presentations for class and for work and like many of you always thought my presentations were pretty good, not great, but darn good and I was sure of that.

Well, I had to prepare a presentation specifically about making better designed presentations, and in my research and preparations for this, I came to realize that about 90% of the presentations I have made have been absolute crap.

I am really taking about the visual design of the presentations, mostly tedious bulleted slides, maybe some screen prints, or gasp! Clip Art to tray and jazz things up.  I always know what I am talking about (well almost always), but the visual element of my presentations have been sorely lacking.

In developing my new and improved presentation I relied heavily on Presentation Zen, by Garr Reynolds, and to a lesser extent by some great examples of visual design on SlideShare. 

From Presentation Zen I cam to realize that simpler is always better, and really understanding the material is  the key to developing and delivering a great presentation.  From SlideShare I found dozens of examples of excellent design.

Here is the presentation I gave on 'Effective Use of Visual Aids'.  It ran about 30 minutes live, and while I know there is still room for improvement, it is a thousand times better designed than my normal stuff.

Effective Use Of Visual Aids

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: steveboese class)

The direct link is here, take a look and let me know what you think. 

Now do I have time to re-design all my class lecture slides in time for Winter?

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