Making Presentation Slides

1 Slide Styling

• Aspect Ratio of 16:9

  Use an aspect ratio of 16:9. Most displays and projectors now use 16:9, rather than 4:3 in the old days.

  Even better, Rslidy enables responsive slides, which adapt to the width of the window!

• Dark Text on Light Background

  Use dark text on a light background (light mode).

• Set Large Enough Font

  The font size needs to be large enough that people in the back of the room can still see.

• Avoid Overcrowding

  Slides should not be chock full and overcrowded. As a rule of thumb, use at most 6 to 7 bullets and sub-bullets per slide.

• Adequate Vertical Separation Between Bullet Items

  Some slide templates provide too little vertcial separation between bullet items, so bullet items seem to visually run into one another. Change the default settings to provide sufficient vertical spacing between bullet items.

• Avoid Excessive Margins

  Some slide templates have huge margins (top, bottom, left, right). Change the default settings to make space for your content.

• Use Running Slide Numbers

  Place a running slide number in the bottom right corner of every slide, including the total number of slides, for example 1 / 22.

  This is tricky in Google Slides. See my Guide to Using Google Slides for a workaround.

• One Slide per Minute

  As a rule of thumb, plan for about one slide per minute.

2 Slide Content

• Use a Title Slide

  At a minimum, state the topic, the course, your group, your names, and the date.

• CC BY 4.0 Licence

  I ask that you place your slide decks under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence, by including the following notice at the bottom of the title slide:

  Copyright 2024 by the author(s), except as otherwise noted.
  This work is placed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence
  

  If you do not wish to do so, simply omit the corresponding notice.

• Capitalise Headings

  In English, headings are capitalised. This means the first word and all main words start with a capital letter. Small connecting words (of, in, a, etc.) are left in lowercase.

• Use Section Separator Slides

  Structure the talk into sections and include a section separator slide before each section.

• Longer Bullets End with Full Stop

  End longer bullet points with a full stop.

• Introduce Sublist with Colon (:)

  The sentence which introduces a sublist should end with a colon (:).

• State Source and Permission for Every Image

  If you use material from elsewhere, you must state the source and permission. This applies particularly to images.

  Place a mini-citation (author, title, visible and clickable URL, etc.) and the permission claimed (e.g. “Used under the terms of CC BY 4.0”, “Used with kind permission of Keith Andrews”, etc.) in a small font either immediately beneath the image or at the bottom left of the slide.

• Prepare Backup Videos for Live Demos

  If you are planning to show a live demo, make sure you have a backup video in case something goes wrong.

• Include Links to Showcase Video

  If you have created showcase videos, upload them to YouTube (they can be unlisted if you prefer), and include the URL (visible and clickable) at the appropriate place in the slides.

Here is an example of a pretty good (but not perfect) set of survey slides:
https://courses.isds.tugraz.at/ivis/surveys/ss2024/ivis-ss2024-g2-survey-setvis-slides.pdf

3 Presentation Tools

• Google Slides [free, web-based]

  Google Slides has a number of downsides. See my Guide to Using Google Slides.

• Powerpoint [Windows, Mac]

• Keynote [Mac]

• Rslidy [free, open-source, HTML slides]

Whatever tool you use, it must be capable of exporting the slide deck (faithfully) as PDF!

4 Resources