Legibility
Your audience is accustomed to presentations that rely on visual aids. Consequently, they expect material that is readable from all seats in the room. Presentation rooms are typically large, and your presentation must be legible from the back row . If you can step back six feet away from your computer's monitor and easily read your slide, your text is large enough. To achieve this, a good rule of thumb is to limit each slide to eight lines of text or less, and limit each line of text to 30 characters or less. Type should be large, no smaller than 24 points, with generous line spacing.
Fonts: Good, clear fonts to use are non-serif fonts such as Arial and Helvetica. To embed fonts in Powerpoint presentations, click on "File", "Save As", "Tools", "Embed True Type Fonts."
Color & Contrast: High contrast is important. Make good use of color and contrast. Dark backgrounds tend to be easier to view, especially with light text and graphics. Good background color choices are black, blue, maroon, or gradient dark colors. Good text colors are white or yellow. If you use a light background, use black or very dark text and graphics.
Maintain consistency throughout your slides. Using the same background color, text size, text color, and uniform fonts throughout all the slides makes it easier for the audience to follow the flow of your ideas.
CAPS: Avoid the use of ALL CAPITAL letters. Words written in ALL CAPS are harder to read and take up more space on the screen. Use bold face and Italics for emphasis, or use a bright color such as yellow text when normal body text is white. Underlined text is not recommended.
Graphics: Clearly label charts and graphs. Label axes and include legends. The smallest text on the screen should have the highest contrast. (White text against a black background or light-colored text with a black drop shadow or a dark background.) Incorporate only the essential elements of a diagram; simplify whenever possible. While it is tempting to leave in detail for the sake of accuracy, too much can reduce readability and obscure the real point you are trying to make. Consider breaking up complex diagrams into sections, one section per slide, so that each section can be made larger and therefore more legible.
Often graphical data that are imported from another application have inadequate line width and font size to be readable. If necessary, re-draw the material using native graphics.
Animation: The use of animation is strongly discouraged. Animation may only be used for its unique ability to show the evolution of a process over time. If you plan to use animation, you MUST have prior approval from the Board.
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Page Set-up Guidelines
Presentations to be projected should be saved as either Powerpoint or PDF (Adobe Acrobat) files.
Powerpoint slides must be sized for 8-1/2" x 11" paper. (Click on "File", "Page Set-Up", click on arrow for "Slides Sized For" and pick "Letter Paper: 8-1/2X11"). DO NOT size for A4 or 35mm slide. Leave 1/2" or 1cm margin on all four sides.
All pages should be in a horizontal (landscape) format, not vertical (portrait) format.
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Delivering Your Presentation
You should do more than just read their slides. The slides are there to support the presentation, not the other way around. Be prepared with explanations, examples and analogies to clarify concepts.
You will have a laser pointer to direct the audience's attention to a particular area of a slide during your presentation. Please observe proper etiquette with this pointer: do not turn it on when it is not needed. When it is needed, please point carefully to the area of interest rather than wave it carelessly across the screen.
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