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Preparing slide-show presentations. S.P. Platt http://www.spplatt.co.uk. Clarity is the key. Not too much detail Ease of assimilation Legibility Careful choice of formatting Typeface Size Colours. Colour schemes. Use light colours on a dark background Choose simple backgrounds
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Preparing slide-show presentations S.P. Platthttp://www.spplatt.co.uk © S.P. Platt 2004
Clarity is the key • Not too much detail • Ease of assimilation • Legibility • Careful choice of formatting • Typeface • Size • Colours © S.P. Platt 2004
Colour schemes • Use light colours on a dark background • Choose simple backgrounds • Choose clearly contrasting colours © S.P. Platt 2004
Text style and size • Use a “sans serif” font • e.g. Arial, like this • Make it big enough to read • The title is 44 point – very big • This is 32 point • This is 28 point • This is 24 point – go no smaller • This is 20 point – too small really! © S.P. Platt 2004
Text content • Be brief • Five words in title • Seven lines in body • Twenty words in body • Tables • Three rows byfour columns © S.P. Platt 2004
Use pictures • A picture paints a thousand words • That’s 50 slides’ worth • Use clear charts, diagrams and graphs • Use clear axes and curves • Use contrasting colours © S.P. Platt 2004
An interesting graph © S.P. Platt 2004
Legibility rules of thumb • Your slides must be visible at a distance of 10 times their height. © S.P. Platt 2004
What a horrible colour scheme! Don’t try to be clever with fonts. This is too small, and much too busy. © S.P. Platt 2004
This is something else that gets on people’s nerves So don’t do it. © S.P. Platt 2004
More bad habits • Can you read this? • Orthis? (That was 16 pt – this is 32 pt) • I suppose there’s a temptation to put as much text on a slide as possible to try to get more information across at one go, but it’s too much and too small to read and, besides, you only end up reading the slide out verbatim during the presentation which is hardly worth doing, you might as well give copies of the slides out to the audience and let them read it themselves while you stand there with nothing to do, because they’ll be too busy reading to listen to what you have to say and that’s not really what it’s all about now, is it? © S.P. Platt 2004
Keep it simple! I shan’t say “stupid” - yet. © S.P. Platt 2004