Better Scientific Presentations

Source Wikipedia under CC license by Brandenands I have always been hesitant to write about typography because I have no formal education on it. However I can't keep quiet after what I have read and seen last week. Last week I found Emiland De Cubber .  He describes himself as a "full-time presentation lover and a part-time presentation designer." Certainly, Emiland's visual stacks stand out, but I disagree with his advise on typography and how he uses it. Now, I know I'm nobody in the Slideshare /presentation world, neither do I want or pretend to be.  I also know that in graphic design there is an entire world of styles. But I also know that design should be One and Universal, and that respecting the audience also means offering them type they can easily read.  So here is can I think about typography.  One single typeface is enough for one presentation stack I'm with Seth Godin in that a slide shouldn't have more than 6 (six) words,...

Last night I was reading Before & After Magazine issue number 3. Their column "The thinking designer" was about what to look for (what to strive for) in good advertisement, but it could as well be applied to great (scientific) presentations: Their message is a surprise. They don't lose clarity. They involve the audience. They challenge curiosity.   They command answers. They let the audience think. They're always well executed. The "curiosity challenge" is also expressed in this quote from filmmaker Sheila Curran Bernard about documentaries At its best, documentaries [in our case scientific presentations] should do more than help viewers pass the time [or information]; they should demand their active engagement, challenging them to think about what they know, how they how it, and want more they want to learn. —Sheila Bernard Author of "Documentary Storytelling"

The use of text in slides is overused, almost abused. In this post I go through two useful principles to improve the use of text in your slides, namely the 6-words-per-slide and 10-20-30 principles.    There is a lot to say about the use of text in a presentation deck, but this is for sure: Minimize the number of words per slide. In this e-book Really Bad PowerPoint,  Seth Godin suggests to use a maximum of 6 words. In the clip below, former Apple Chief Evangelist Guy Kawasaki talks about his 10-20-30 principle. The 30 stands for 30pt (pt = point) as the minimum font size in a slide. To make this rule more precise take a look at the image below. Both sentences are written in 36pt, but one sentence is bigger than the other one (click on the image to enlarge.) Conclusion? Not only does size matter, also type matters (no pun intended!) John McWade from Before&After Magazine  suggests to look for types that contain simple lines have large counters and wide ...