How well you prepare your presentation can make all the difference in how the audience perceives your work. The best and most interesting work in the world can be made uninteresting or unintelligible if your presentation is not clear and easy to read. This Web page offers you some advice and guidance on making your presentation easy for the audience to see, read and understand.

Recommendations On Making Slides Easy To See And Read

• Use a horizontal (landscape) format wherever possible. Center all material on the slide.
  
  
• High contrast is important. Use black letter on medium yellow or white letters on medium blue or red.
  
  
• Keep slides as simple as possible. Try to limit each slide to one main idea. Do not use long, complicated slides. Use several simple slides rather than one complicated slide especially if you will be discussing it at length.
  
  
• Use duplicate slides if you need to refer to the same slide at different times in your presentation.
  
  
• For slides with text only, use no more than one level of indent.
  
  
• Limit the number of lines. For slides with only major items, use no more than six lines. For slides with minor items, use no more than eight lines.
  
  
• Limit the number of words. Use no more than 30 words in major items. Use no more than 36 words in minor lines.
  
  
• For slides with illustrations, make all lines, numbers, and captions of sufficient thickness so that when they are protected, the lines, numbers, and captions are visible.
  
  
• If you use photographs, have the photographer shoot as tightly as possible or use digital photo editing software to crop out all unnecessary background.
  
  
• Use the spell checker in your presentation software! Obey the rules for good writing, especially for values and units.

Here are two sample slides illustrating these concepts.

How to Check Your Presentation for Viewability

There is a simple way to test whether the audience will be able to clearly see your slides. Using your slide development program, display a slide in "full screen" mode, so that there are no toolbars or menus visible. Stand back from your monitor a distance equal to ten times the size of your screen. If you have a 19 inch (~48 cm) monitor, that would be 190 inches, about 16 feet (~4.8 meters). All the text and graphics will be readable in a well-designed slide. If the text or graphics are unreadable, then you need to increase the size of the text and graphics. This may require you to create an additional slide. A typical rule of thumb is to use large bold Arial fonts for all the text with the minimum font size of 24. Do not make the letters in figures or tables smaller than the regular text. Complete this check for each slide in your presentation to be sure that your entire presentation will be readable by the audience.

Audiovisual Equipment

Presentation And Special Presentation Sessions

The following audiovisual equipment will be available in each meeting room for use during the conference:

• LCD Data Projector with laptop computer
  
  
• Transparency Overhead Projector

APEC will not allow authors to connect their computers to the display projectors. Transferring the projector from one computer to another and back again takes too much time and creates opportunities for computer crashes.

We do suggest that authors bring a back up of their presentation on a CD-ROM or USB interfaced memory media.

Professional Education And Exhibitor Seminars

APEC will provide a LCD data projector and screen for your use. You are to provide your own computer for your presentation.

If you need to use an overhead transparency projector instead of computer projection, contact the APEC offices no later than February 3, 2006.

APEC recommends that Professional Education Seminar presenters be in the seminar room and starting to set up, including testing their computer with the provided projector, at least 30 minutes before the start of the seminar.

APEC recommends that Exhibitor Seminar speakers be prepared to start setting up and testing their computer with the projector as soon as the previous seminar concludes.

Special Requests - Any Speaker

APEC will consider Additional audiovisual equipment needs on a case-by-case basis. Contact the APEC offices with your request no later than February 3, 2006.

Questions?

Please contact the APEC offices with any questions.