Notes written on September 28, 2008 and slightly modified.
Presentations using slides
Issues discussed by Don McMillan in ‘Life after death by PowerPoint’:
- do not put every word you are going to say on slide – otherwise you would not be needed for the audience
- use spell-checking software – many people will have much time to see your text [originally this text was not spell-checked]
- bullet only key points – bullets are for shooting people or ideas, when too many are used the key ideas will not stand out
- avoid bad colour combinations
- do not use too much slides
- do not put too much data on a graph – it should be easy to read and convey only the important information. Avoid three-dimensional effects and useless labels.
- animations should not distract
- the font used says something about you.
My own advice not discussed above:
- do not use slow and strange visual effects – it is not the Monty Python’s Flying Circus but a presentation to convey some information
- avoid useless images, etc
- use TeX if you use any bit of mathematical notation
- check how much time the presentation will take
Graphs
Issues discussed by Don McMillan:
- do not put too much data on a graph – it should be easy to read and convey only the important information. Avoid three-dimensional effects and useless labels.
My own observations:
- remember to check if your software interprets the x-values as numbers, not labels, for a sequence of y-values
- use sane number format
Fonts
When using Polish ogonek (the diacritical mark used in Polish ‘ą’, ‘ę’ and their uppercase variants):
- do not use Microsoft Core Fonts for the Web – they made it wrongly
- use fonts made by GUST, e.g. Latin Modern or TeX Gyre
- do not substitute it by cedilla (used correctly in ‘ç’) or any quote mark
- before using a different font with it, learn if it is designed correctly.
For Polish ‘ł’ and ‘Ł’:
- do not use Computer Modern or any OT1-encoded font – the bar on ‘Ł’ is larger than on ‘ł’, all CM-descendant fonts containing these characters are correct
- do not substitute it by other characters – there is no reason to do it
