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

by Garr Reynolds

bleed images off the edge of the slide frame. That is, fill the entire slide area with the image. (Bleed is actually a term that comes from the printing world. In a book like this one, when you want to fill an entire page with an image, you must use an image that is just a tiny bit larger than the area of the page. In other words, you bleed the image off the page to make sure none of the underlying paper color shows through when you cut the page, which would destroy the effect.) With slides, all you need is an image that is exactly the same size as the slide. If your slides are 1024 x 768 pixels, for example, then the dimensions of the image need to be at least this large to fill the screen. A full-bleed or full-screen image gives the illusion that the slide is bigger than it is. This is especially true if part of the subject in your image runs off the screen. For example, a burger shop may make a poster with a picture of their “Enormo Burger” with part of the burger bleeding off the edge to suggest that it’s so big it can’t fit within the frame. This makes the image more compelling and it draws the viewer in.