Slides: one idea per slide, and nothing the audience has to read while you speak

An audience cannot read and listen at the same time — and when both are offered, reading wins. A dense slide silences the speaker for as long as it takes to read it.

One idea per slide

• If a slide has two ideas, split it.
• Slides are free; attention is not.
• Twenty simple slides beat ten crowded ones.

Text

• Short phrases, not sentences.
• Large enough to read from the back row.
• Key technical terms written out — listeners may mishear them.
• Never a paragraph.

Figures

• Simplify from the paper version; a talk figure carries one message.
• Label axes clearly and say what they are aloud.
• Highlight the part you are discussing.
• Remove everything not needed for the point.

The structure slides

• One slide stating the question.
• One slide stating the take-home message, near the start and again at the end.
• Audiences remember what they saw twice.

Practical robustness

• Check contrast — projectors wash out pale colours.
• Avoid red-green as your only distinction.
• Carry a copy that does not depend on the network.
• Know how to give the talk if the projector fails entirely.

One thing worth remembering

Show your take-home message twice — near the start and again at the end.

People arrive late, drift off, and remember the beginning and the end of a talk far better than the middle — so a message shown only once, in the middle, is a message most of the room will not carry out of the door.

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