Creating meaningful slide presentations
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Creating meaningful slide presentations
black text on white backgrounds (with red text for highlighting) is the easiest for the audience to read. I recommend a sans-serif font (e.g., Calibri, Arial) no smaller than 18 points, so the audience at the back of the room can read the text easily.
By Duanduan Han
2. Use verbs to make titles more meaningful
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or oral presentations at technical conferences, slides are just as important as the speech itself. Making informational and easy-to-read slides is a critical skill for researchers. While preparing my slides for my first conference in graduate school, I realized that creating slides is much more than copying and pasting figures and adding text. To help fellow researchers make better slides, I would like to share six lessons that I acquired during my graduate school years.
1. Use consistent and correct formatting
To some, the formatting of slides may appear to be a purely aesthetic issue. However, consistent formatting conveys a sense of organization, attention to detail, and professionalism. Take time to align images, unify font type and font size, and double-check grammar, punctuation, and word capitalization. Typos and minor mistakes distract the audience from the content. (It is human nature to look for more typos after seeing one.) Additionally,
A slide title usually has the largest font size and instantly grabs the audience’s attention. A simple title such as “Effect of atmospheric pressure on boiling point of liquid A” is straightforward and technically correct. However, such a title wastes limited slide space and provides little information. Instead, use a complete sentence in active voice: “Increasing atmospheric pressure leads to a higher boiling point of liquid A.” This new title is informational and captures the essence of the slide. The rest of the slide can describe the experimental procedure, show plots, and present detailed conclusions. 3. Use widescreen slides
A widescreen 16:9 slide can accommodate more material than a standard 4:3 one. With more content on one slide, the speaker can display more context. For example, on each page describing results, there could be a photo of the experimental apparatus or a list of parameters on the side to remind the audience. 4. Include only necessary figures
a
Including more figures does not necessarily improve the audience’s understanding. The figures that are not being discussed in the oral presentation should be removed. I have seen many slides that showed a cluster of six or more figures in one slide, and the speaker only mentioned one in the talk. The unmentioned figures include too many details and distract the audience from the talk. 5. Do not use unnecessary animations
b (a) This slide needs better formatting. (b) Consistent formatting creates a professional look.
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Although animations may seemingly make a presentation more interesting or creative, they often end up being risky and distracting.
Think twice before adding a line of text that flies in or a figure that bounces. If an ani
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