Slide Design for Developers

I agree, these are some pretty slides. But I have a feeling a talk called "How GitHub Uses GitHub to Build GitHub" by someone at GitHub no less, would have been popular if it had been a series of black-and-white LaTeX bullet points.

You may not considering yourself a "designer" but you are. Your command over typography, colors, and shapes aren't typical among developers.

I think he raises a good point, inadvertently. Sometimes you put more on slides not because you want your audience to read them, but because your slides are going to be an artifact of the talk for reference later. I think this is a tough tradeoff sometimes. Of course, if you think your slides are really going to undermine your talk by having too much information, then cut it down. But it's not a free lunch: you're removing information from those who may download them as a reference later.

I realize slides are not really meant to be referenced, and that that type of thing belongs in supplementary documentation, but you know that's not how it works. People download the slides and fill in the gaps in their own minds (often to the detriment of the author, since they are misinterpreted,) so you might as well try to help them fill them in with as much information as possible without sacrificing your ability to give a good talk.

Not a developer, but I used your tips for my talk yesterday. I thought the slides came out great and the talk went over very well. Thanks for sharing your tips!

Here's what I came up with, if you're interested: http://www.slideshare.net/tomcatalini/putting-yourself-out-t...

Awesome, giving a presentation on Wednesday, and certainly using some of your tips. For the record, I agree that you have a great eye for design as well. Your one of the 'gifted' ones who are hackers and designers. You are a special breed. :)

Slides are designed to keep the audience on point as the conversation goes on and to ensure that the audience isn't reading the slides instead of listening to the talk.

These slides get it while leaving a 'alright, that was memorable' feeling as you walk away

The typeface used in these slides is Yanone Kaffeesatz, one of the free google web fonts:

http://www.google.com/webfonts/specimen/Yanone+Kaffeesatz

I love the design of those slides but the angled text on just a few puts me off. I don't know if its just me but I have trouble with angled text. My eyes just can't seem to focus and so it all looks like gibberish.

I love slide #63. It reminds me a lot of e-mails I had to read...X-| and how much I hate that ticket system's rich text area for letting my users express their text-style art!

Yeah, don't want to bust your developer cred or anything, but you are a designer. Nicely done.

For more in-depth info on slide design, see Nancy Duarte's excellent book slide:ology.

Really nice slides indeed. Any chances you post that talk, btw?

Which presentation tool do you use, Keynote?

Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I've seen a half dozen slide decks by GitHub about GitHub, and I can't remember a single shred of content from any of them. All I can remember is that too-familiar "I want those five minutes back" feeling whenever I get fooled into reading something banal and superficial. To me, that seems like an utter failure of slide design and composition.

A great presenter doesn't need slides at all. That's a good reason to emulate the presenter. It's a terrible reason to emulate their slides. Mediocre slides in the hands of a less-than-stellar presenter are a recipe for zzzzz. Make slides that don't need a great presenter. Make slides that don't even need you, that can be sent to people you don't even know exist and still convey your ideas well enough to invite further conversation. You might not get a reputation as a great presenter that way, but you will succeed in conveying information.