SLIOES! / SUGGESTEB \ The author is at the School of - PDF document

MISCELLANEA COMMUNICATE YOUR SCIENCE! . . . SUPER SEMINAR SLIDES Bernard S. Brown stunned silence or the lack of ques- It’s your first research talk. You’ve tions. ‘Did I do something wrong?‘, spent months doing the work and you ask yourself. weeks writing the talk, and at last The answer is, probably, yes. you’re nearly ready. Although you Assuming that your talk was well found writing the talk not too difficult, thought out, not too long and deliv- there was one aspect that perplexed you - the slides. You felt that you ered clearly, in all likelihood the problem lies with the slides you ought to have some slides and you were told that you’d have to design used. Only too often, slides are con- sidered to be an optional extra to a and prepare them yourself. But, little FIGURE 1 talk and are prepared at the last advice was given. Fortunately, your minute, without thought for their department has a photocopier that design and content. Only too often can copy directly onto acetate sheets to be understood, a slide must be both they contain far too much infor- for an overhead projector (OHP), so simple and legible. mation. Why not do better next you decide to use that. You photo- Simplicity means thinking about time by designing some ‘super semi- copy some nice-looking graphs, a what is going onto a slide and making nar slides’? You can use the word couple of impressive-looking tables it as clear and uncluttered as possible. SLIDE to remind you of the guide- and a diagram or two. You also type lines that apply to both ‘ordinary’ A slide should present one idea only - and photocopy some summaries. So, but it should need you to explain what projector slides and acetate sheets for now you are ready. overhead projectors. it is saying. If you were to give a talk Your audience files in and you about giving slide presentations, for begin. As your talk proceeds, you example, you could show Slide 1 and ignore the puzzled looks and the cran- SL - SIMPLE AND LEGIBLE say something like: ‘Slides are not These two rules are so important ing necks as detailed slide after slide is that it’s difficult to know which of intended to tell the whole story. They flashed before the audience. Finally, summarize and make a point that you them to put first. To make impact, and you finish and cannot understand the SLIOES! / SUGGESTEB \ The author is at the School of Biological Sciences, Room 2.205, Stopford Building, Oxford Road, Manchester, UK Ml3 9PT. trends in CELL BIOLOGY (Vol. 6) February 1996 74 0 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd

(267 mm) X loin., which is diffi- go so far as to say that if it looks right cult to file in an A4-based filing sys- it very likely is right! We all have an tem, but which fits the square OHP instinctive design-sense that tells us Story = Slides + Speaker platen perfectly. However, not all the when something doesn’t look quite area is projected. The oblong is A4 right. One way to cultivate your (297mm tall by 210mm wide), design-sense is to look at other l-----l which is filed easily but is too tall people’s examples. Examine the and too narrow for the OHP platen. graphics in newspapers and on tele- The point is that you need to decide vision programmes. I<eep an ‘ideas beforehand what is the usable area file’ of adverts, brochures, pictures, of these sheets. A useful rule of diagrams and flow-sheets that might The thumb (Fig. 1) is to leave a 2Scm be of use to you. If you find this advice Magical Number (1 in.) margin around the square too vague then try the following tips: Seven sheets, to give a working area of * Place captions in prime spots on Plus or Minus 470 cm2. For A4 sheets, you can use the slide: top-left above the draw- the area formed by two A4 sheets ing or bottom-middle beneath overlapped as shown in Figure 1. This the drawing. is a square of side 21 cm, giving an Avoid vertical captions since they l . area of 441 cm2. / are harder to read. They may be all Legibility also includes letter-size SLIDE 3 right for factory chimneys, but, for and letter-style. A rule-of-thumb states your slides, put the letters on their *Never use one slide when that letter-height should be 6% of sides, reading upwards. slide-height. This means 1.2 mm for ‘Six lines par slide, six words When drawing graphs, use bold l 35 mm slides and 1.2cm for OHP rather than spidery lines. You will ‘No more words than you’d slides prepared as above. For letter- put on front of a T-shirt! find some ideas on the accompany- style, you should use lowe&case rather ing cartoon on page 74. than capitals because they are easier to read, particularly if there is line after line of them. Traffic signs use lower- case lettering for this reason. Use a then amplify and explain. The story is simple letter-style and avoid use of r2 the slide, backed up by the speaker’s many varied fonts. + explanation.’ Then, you could show n Slide 2 and say, ‘The American psy- I - INTERESTING chologist George Miller, in a paper The slides shown so far are all published in 1956, concluded that simple and legible. They do the job I ! people listening to a talk were able to that a slide should do - communicate / remember about seven pieces of infor- information to the viewer. But they are mation, plus or minus two.’ Next, all boring because they contain only addressing how much information words. Words are not visuals, so if you want to make your slides interesting should go onto a slide, you could show you should include visuals too. Slide 3 and say, ‘Many rules of thumb Compare Slide 2 with Slide 4, and have been devised to guide the slide Slide 3 with Slides 5-7; the two sets of maker. Here are three of them. In a presentation, divide your material into slides say the same thing - but which short chunks and put each chunk on do you think is more interesting? its own slide. For slides containing Notice that these visual versions con- words only, try to keep to six lines, tain fewer words, make their point / each containing no more than six more vividly and will need a little more SLIDE 6 words. More graphically, you could say explaining from you! SIX words that you should never put more One point to watch here is ‘art ver- only on each line L,NES ____________________________ words on a slide than you could get sus science’. You should never let a ONLY ___ ___________ _ _____________ onto the front of a T-shirt. All these diagram or illustration obscure your ON ________________________________ statements, and others not included message. If you use too many vivid EACH _________________------- __-_ SL,DE ______L----_____------------ colours, if you use arty drawings rather here, are merely guides, not holy writ!’ No matter how simple a slide is, its than simple sketches, or if you use three-dimensional pillars for bar impact is lost if it is not legible. Legibility means both the area of charts, then these devices might prove distracting. Think carefully about slide covered and the size and style / SLIDE 7 \ of typeface used. Remember that whether to use them. you only have about 2cm2 of slide, or about 700cm’ of OHP acetate D - DESIGNED sheet to contain your message, so By this, I mean thinking about not don’t overcrowd it. Indeed, OHP only what is to go onto a slide but sheets carry hidden risks. They are whereabouts in your square or oblong commonly supplied in two shapes, it is to go. Books on graphic design go square or oblong. The square is 10 in. into such matters in detail, but I would 75 trends in CELL BIOLOGY (Vol. 6) February 1996