Slides, either real or electronic, are used in presentations for a number of different purposes. Some people use them to lull their audience to sleep, while others use them to keep their audience awake. Some use them to reveal truths, while others hide it. Some want to show what things look like, while others want to show interactions or interrelationships between things and their neighbours. Some even manage to describe the world in numbers and then turn the numbers into pictures! Your slide presentation should not, however, try to compete with rock videos or psychedelic light shows with fast paced action.

Structure your presentation so that it and its slides have a beginning, a middle and an end. Begin with a title slide followed by an overview of what your talk is about. Reinforce your major points with a summary slide at the end.

Slides for your presentation may be made in a variety of ways. These include direct colour slides which are made either in the field or research lab and black on white, white on black or white on blue slides which are usually made in the photolab from specially made artwork or from cribbed journal illustrations. The latter have copyright implications of which you should be aware. They can be direct digital images from scanners or cameras.

Artwork should generally be photographed on a copy stand with pairs of lamps mounted at a 35 degree angle or scanned on the flatbed scanner. Make sure that the ceiling lights are turned off and watch carefully for shadows on your artwork and reflections if you are using glass to hold it flat. Not all artwork can be used for all things and you may need different artwork for seminars and publication. This will particularly depend upon the amount of information and the fineness of detail in the figure.

Artwork for printed purposes can have great amounts of detailed but artwork for presentations should be kept simple and bold. In many cases it is better to use several simpler slides, each making one or two points, rather than one overly complex one. This is true in making both visually effective slides and establishing a visual rhythm in your presentation which will help keep it alive. Make sure that your lettering will be large enough to read and that lines are thick enough to show up well on the screen. The room in which you make your presentation may not darken properly and the projector may loose some of your slide's sharpness. The slides need to take this into account.

Try for the best ratio of ink to information in your figures! Keep extraneous stuff out of your drawings and keep them as simple as possible. Your graphs should emphasize accurate communication of information rather than imparting biases to it. Most slides and posters are created in Microsoft PowerPoint.

preparing your presentation

analyse your intent,
organize your material and
visualize the final results

  1. Plan the points that you want to make.
  2. Photograph any real objects or locations, remembering the availability of seasonal material.
  3. Gather together and make all the artwork you will need.
  4. Scan or photograph your artwork.
  5. Process the film, remembering that colour film must go away for several days.
      Leave enough time so that you can redo everything if you make a mistake.
  6. Edit and sequence your slides carefully. Add blanking slides where needed for "non-visual"
      pauses in your talk.
  7. Rehearse and then test the delivery of your presentation with a friendly trial audience.
  8. Dress appropriately for your audience, neither too formally nor too informally.
  9. Set up the projector in advance so as to fill the screen comfortably (both height and width)
      with your images.
10. Test the connection between the computer and projector. It can be difficult to get them to "talk"
      to each other.
11. Check that there are spare bulbs for the projector and a remote control, preferably wireless.
12. Make sure you know the location of room light switches and, if there are any, how the lectern
      controls work.
13. Relax and enjoy your presentation. After all, if you don't, no one else will.

For some other thoughts on giving talks read Edward Tufte's Envisioning Information, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information and his essay The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint. Also have a look at the Virtual Presentation Assistant site. Finally, know your audience! Remember that different audiences will need different levels of sophistication, in both the information that you present and the way that you present it. Now have a look at some examples of what you might use in:

The Effective Presentation