Principles of Effective Slide

Principles
of “Effective” Slide Presentation
By Volodymyr Vakhitov,
KSE/KEI
November 22, 2011

Three Key Questions
(Economics)
What? (To produce)
For Whom? (to produce)
How? (to produce)

Three Key Questions (Presentation)
What… (What is my core message?)
For Whom? (Who is my audience?)
How? (The art of delivering the message)

Structure of the presentation:
Content
Visual appearance
Oral presentation

Roadmap:
Content
Visual appearance
Oral presentation

Content
Definitely correlates with your paper!
Opening: attention-catchers
Smilingly unrelated story or
set of “stylized facts”
Idea:
“punch-line”,
everything else should support it;
link with your opening

Content
Literature:
Do NOT simply list authors: nobody cares!
Highlight only the major findings relevant to the topic, not everything you know or have read.
Show how your work can be placed in the literature

Content
Example: Used Car Price
Price = f (Age, Car Specs, Type, Mileage)
Age
Mileage: liters per 100 km (Target Variable)
Car Specs: Head Room, Trunk Space, Weight, Length, Gear Ratio
Car Type: set of dummies

Content
Tables should be visible and concise!
No Stata outputs! (Use outreg or estout)
Conclusion: very concise, only major points
Balance content evenly across sections
Effective ending (tied up with starting attention catch-point) ⇨ good and whole impression in general.

Roadmap:
Content
Visual appearance
Oral presentation

Visual appearance and effects
Mind the audience (readers vs. listeners)
Layout:
Structure, structure, structure!
Unity of style (font, size, slide transitions, slide numbers, effects)
Amount of information (nobody will ever read the entire paragraph on slides: use 3-4 bullets)

Visual appearance and effects
Fonts
This text is typed in Times New Roman, 32pts
My very important point 1
My very important point 2
My very important point 3
Some explanation of point 3 (Times New Roman, Bold, 28)

Visual appearance and effects
Fonts
This text is typed in Arial, 32pts
My very important point 1
My very important point 2
My very important point 3
Some explanation of point 3 (Arial, Bold, 28)

Visual appearance and effects
Fonts
This text is typed in Comic Sans, 32pts
My very important point 1
My very important point 2
My very important point 3
Some explanation of point 3 (Comic Sans, Bold, 28)

Difference between
San Serif (Arial) and
Serif (Book Antigua), size 20
This very important text has been typed manually to additionally stress its utter importance. No other text in the entire presentation was ever even closely as important as this one. The sole goal of this presentation is to demonstrate you how important and significant this text is. All statistical tests and empirical hypothesizing support the greatness of minds of anyone whose attention was fixed on this text for more than fifteen seconds straight.
This very important text has been typed manually to additionally stress its utter importance. No other text in the entire presentation was ever even closely as important as this one. The sole goal of this presentation is to show you how important and significant this text is. All statistical tests and empirical hypothesizing support the greatness of minds of anyone whose attention was fixed on this text for more than fifteen seconds straight.

Difference between
size 16 and 18 (Arial)
This text is no less important than the previous one, though it is typeset in lower size letters. I have chosen this size not to undermine is equal importance, but underline how unimportant a text may look if it is small and difficult to read from the first row of seats. I deliberately used polysyllable words and substantially heavier grammatical constructions than necessary so that you could feel with all its upcoming inevitability that a text written in so long expressions and without any slightest hint of punctuation, to say nothing about colloquial construction interjected into the main text is quite difficult to perceive even for the original author of the text with no regard to (im)possible case of rampant plagiarizing.
This text is no less important than the previous one, though it is typeset in lower size letters. I have chosen this size not to undermine is equal importance, but underline how unimportant a text may look if it is small and difficult to read from the first row of seats. I deliberately used polysyllable words and substantially heavier grammatical constructions than necessary so that you could feel with all its upcoming inevitability that a text written in so long expressions and without any slightest hint of punctuation, to say nothing about colloquial construction interjected into the main text is quite difficult to perceive even for the original author of the text with no regard to (im)possible case of rampant plagiarizing.

Visual appearance and effects
Use contrast backgrounds:
Green, yellow, blue, or even pink are not visible on white background
Colored backgrounds
do not always work as well

Visual appearance
“Zen slides” are wrong!

I beleive you still can raed this text and even udnrestand its cotnent. However there is sevral speling and gramar erorrs.
How many have you already find?
10 (correct version below)
I believe you still can read this text and even understand its content. However there are several spelling and grammar errors. (2 more?)
Visual appearance and effects: spelling

Roadmap:
Content
Visual appearance
Oral presentation

Oral presentation
Rehearse your presentation in advance
Eye contact: Look at your audience, not in your slides
Gestures: open, supporting your words

Oral presentation
Vocal variety:
Speak CLEARLY and LOUDLY
Don’t mumblebumble monotonically
Make pauses

Oral presentation
Emotions are important!
Audience should feel that you have mastered the topic
Prepare notes in advance,
Long tables, formulae: handouts
Time control (1 slide ~ 1 min.) !!!

What I Did Wrong:
Slides:
Too long title
Too much text in the intro
Plain text: no bullets
Different styles and fonts
Long numbers have no dividers
Equations too long
Typos and grammar errors

Presentation:
No structure
No idea what the point is
No data description
No conclusion and discussion of the results
Monotonic voice
No eye contact
Reading rather than speaking
Language and pronunciation
What I Did Wrong:

Conclusion
Effective presentation is one you want to see again, one you like, love and admire.
Idea – structure – layout – rehearsal –performance

Conclusion
If you don’t like your presentation, it is probably not worth to be shown to others as well.
It is you who sells your project, not your text / pictures / tables…