Some quick tips for better presentations

The staff of BioCommunications wants to make you and your presentation look good! We will happily evaluate and make alterations to improve the quality of your presentation. Call the Medical Television section at 626-0167 for assistance or email your presentation as an attachment. In the meantime, here are some quick tips to consider.

Your PowerPoint or Keynote presentation may look great in the classroom. However, when it's capture on video and transmitted using compression, bad things can happen. Here are some quick tips we suggest, though we'd love to sit down with you and optimize the presentation in person.

• Use large font sizes (at least 24 point) for body copy. A sans serif like Verdana, Helvetica or Arial work best.
• Use bold type only for titles or to emphasize. If a bold type is used for body copy it can be difficult to read.
• Employ contrast between the font color and background color. Use light colored fonts on a dark background or dark fonts on a pastel or light gray background. Avoid bright white or red backgrounds. If white is used, gray it down a little (RGB 234, 234, 234) so it won’t glare. 
• Avoid the color red. It will flare by the time it reaches its target audience. Red fonts are generally unreadable at a remote site.
• Avoid thin lines. Don’t go below 2 ¼ pt or 3 pt lines.
• Don’t put too much information on any one slide. Keep it simple. Do not go to the edge of the slide. Keep a comfortable space around your information (3/4 to 1 inch) so the picture will not be cropped by the video processing.
• If you wish to insert pictures into your presentation, convert them from BMP or TIF to JPG. This will save on memory, making it easier to transfer and will not slow down the speed of the computer when transitioning between slides.