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OVERHEAD TRANSPARENCIES

The three most important points for transparencies (and slides):

1. Clean
2. Simple
3. Necessary to the story line

 Transparencies should illustrate a single point and, like the
presentation itself, have only one focus.
 Complex data delivered during a seminar cannot be fully
appreciated unless the speaker separates them into a series of
simplified constituents.
 Try to avoid showing tables.

Most audiences find equations intimidating and are likely to "tune
out" as soon as one appears on the screen.

Some general rules:

 Lettering on viewgraphs and slides can never be too big.
 Uniformity of style throughout the presentation accentuates
and underscores the flow and coherence of the talk.

Rules for figures:

 Graphs should contain clearly labelled axes.
 The less busy a figure appears, the more justice it does to the
information it attempts to communicate.
 Delete all information from the figures that is irrelevant to the
presentation.
 A figure can be enhanced by a line or two concisely describing
the conclusions to be drawn from the figure.
 If the same figure has to be used more than once, use a
duplicate rather than disrupt the momentum of the presentation by
having to hunt for the early viewgraph.

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