NCCC167
North Central Regional Corn Breeding Research

Home
E-mail List
Meetings
Minutes
 Visual Aids
Links

Visual Aids

  • The purpose of visual aids is to present data or pictures that cannot be communcated verbally. Visual aids augment your presentation, they are not the basis for it.

  • Use of the following template will assist in making good slides. Visual aids must work in large rooms where people will be far from the screen.

When making text or title slides, this template can serve as a guide. Include about 0.1" outside the template lines in the camera viewfinder. Nine double-spaced lines are maximum. For a projected image 12' high, upper- and lowercase 12-point (10 pitch) type will be easily legible 120' away. USE OF ALL UPPERCASE LETTERS WILL EXTEND THE LEGIBILITY DISTANCE A LITTLE FURTHER. For true kindness, a message this long should be divided among two or three slides!

  • Avoid complex backgrounds, busy graphics, and such items only distract your audience. DO NOT choose busy and colorful Power Point Templates - these are extremely distracting. Black text on plain white background or white/yellow text on plain blue is preferable. Don't try to show your audience that you have really good taste in choosing highly distracting backgrounds from the built in Power Point Templates.

  • Graphs and charts need to be kept simple - do not produce a line graph with 20 different lines on it - generally, a comparison among 3-5 data series (e.g., 3-5 lines on a graph) is a maximum. Shadows and 3-D effects on bar graphs only distract your audience from your main point.

  • Also avoid too many colors on a slide. You will end up using combinations that do not have sufficient contrast.

  • Do not use red text on a green background, green on blue, or red on blue because about 10% of your male audience will have trouble seeing these colors (color discrimination impaired persons).

  • If you have to make a point from a previous slide, use a duplicate slide instead of paging backwards

  • Include equipment and plant slides in the talk to assist with materials and methods description and provide a break in the flow of text slides.

  • DO NOT use the screen as your outline!! When you look back at the screen where your presentation is projected, you lose eye contact with your audience and we won't hear you - we will try to set the room up so you can see the screen on a laptop from which your slides are projected, but just in case, it might be a good idea to bring a hard copy or outline so you know what's coming in your talk, and aren't constantly looking at the screen where your talk is projected.

J. Edwards

rev. 1/25/2007

 
NCCC167 Web Page maintained by Jode Edwards

This page was last modified on

January 25, 2007