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 makes responsive slides, which adapt to the width of the window.

• Dark text on light background.

  Use dark text on a light background.

• Set a 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.

  If you use Google Slides, you can use Andreas Steinkellner's automatic slide numbering add-on script:
  https://github.com/NarrowCode/slides-progress-bar

• Approx. one slide per minute.

  As a rule of thumb, plan for 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 2023 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.

• Longer bullets end with a full stop.

  End longer bullet points with a full stop.

• Introduce a sublist with a 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, URL, etc.) and the permission claimed (Used with kind permission of Keith Andrews, or Used under the terms of CC BY 4.0, etc.) at the bottom left or bottom right of the slide where the image appears.

• 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 link(s) to showcase video(s).

  If you have created showcase videos, upload them to YouTube (they can be unlisted), and include the URL 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/iaweb/surveys/ws2020/iaweb-ws2020-g3-survey-card-sorting-tools-slides.pdf

3 Presentation Tools

• Google Slides [free, web-based]

• 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