So I'm putting together a talk for Big Conference, and I am in rigid paralysis.
It's not the choice of this graph vs that, or which data to keep, or how much intro I need.
It's the elephant in the room: What color should the slide background be?
I'm almost paralyzed typing this.
White: standard (for everyone who blanches at the once-default powerpoint royal blue plate special); bright and contrast-y; but glaring, often too contrast-y, and a disaster if you have any dark immunofluorescence images or similar--the white background blinds your viewers before their eyes can adapt to darker hues. I don't actually have any of those images, but still--the whole Very Bright Screen in Kinda Dim Room thing bugs me.
(I write as I type on my laptop in the dusk.)
Dark: dramatic, but then you're faced with the question of whether to make all your graphs with white axes etc, or to put white boxes on the dark background and plop your graphs on there, which doesn't seriously annoy me but has a certain ad hoc quality to it.
JrProf, I expect you to take some time off your high-minded projects to address this quasi-sartorial dilemma.
15 years ago
18 comments:
I'm a big fan of a pale yellow background with dark teal lettering... throw in some dark purples and magentas for accents... something soft but not too white.
I feel like I'm in some sort of shock treatment when the light-to-dark thing happens during a presentation.
If your figures are mostly white, I'd stick to the light background. I'm a fan of light backgrounds, with a line at the top and bottom sectioning off the slide title and references, respectively. I usually throw the group or LargeU logo in the left upper corner, with a line down the left for emphasis.
I usually like it best when others use dark backgrounds, but when I try to - I rip my hair out because my figures always look best on a white background. Plus I like the effect of stuff just floating on a slide and not a square white graph on a dark background.
It's a trade off really.. do a demo slide or two and post em. Let your readers vote!
What's the hook or theme for your talk? Do you have any colour figures? Usually I let something like that determine my colour scheme (pick whatever colour from your figure/image appeals to you most, and make the background a very light or very dark version of that).
I'd also try some kind of not too stark blinding off white and see how it looks.... I'm a white box around the figure kind of girl, but I think the transition is less shocking from off-white/pale something to white than from dark colour to white.
I agree with the others- if you really don't like white, go with some kind of beige or light blue or something. Personally, I really dislike black backgrounds. I feel like I'm getting sucked into some big black hole... and then, god forbid, when fluorescence is involved, I feel like I've been transported back to 1992. I may have more issues that your average viewer. :o)
Here I am, in a low-minded state!
I have never given a presentation that did not have a white background. In my view, anything else is distracting. I also have poor vision and anything other than white background can really make my eyes strain to see what is going on.
Another reason to choose white is there are a large number of people who are color blind and too many colors can make slides very confusing for them. White will work fine for everyone.
What Juniorprof said. And as long as we're talking about slides, please, please, please, please choose your typefaces correctly!!!
Do not use Comic Sans or Times New Roman for slide titles. Use a humanist sans serif typeface, such as Syntax or Myriad.
If you are concerned about color blind folks (since about 8% of Caucasian males are colorblind, at the conferences I go to that means about 8% of the audience is colorblind), try to use thick lines and label with symbol shapes as well as color where possible. If you're really in the mood for procrastinating, you can check your graphs at www.vischeck.com/vischeck to see how they'd look if you were colorblind. Also, I've heard they can see the green laser pointers better than the red ones.
Two of my thesis committee members were colorblind, so I'm well-practiced in the art of green/magenta. I don't think that's an issue here since I have at most two colors on all of my graphs anyhow.
The vision argument thing is new to me--I didn't realize it was that much harder. Although, if I'm doing the graph on white box on dark background thing, it shouldn't be an issue, right?
Physio, I've heard you recommend those two fonts before but they're not in any of my (powerpoint) font lists. Of course, at least until the recent weeks of Obama-dithering, I'd wanted to use his trademark Gotham, also not in any font lists I own.
Anyhoo, thanks for the input all. I'll try an off-white background so the glare isn't as bad.
Myriad and Syntax are not bundled with any operating systems. Myriad is bundled with the Adobe Creative Suite, which I use for all of my slide and figure preparation. I have never used Powerpoint in my life.
You can purchase Myriad or Syntax on-line, the former from Adobe, the latter at Myfonts.com.
If you don't want to purchase fonts, Helvetica or Arial are not too horrible for slide labels and titles.
I have never used Powerpoint in my life
Wow, I thought I was the only one!! Occassionally I am forced to use it due to compatibility issues at meetings but I always take my mac with me so I can use Keynote.
I generate all my slides in InDesign, and then convert them to PDFs with embedded fonts. These PDFs are completely platform independent when displayed using Adobe Reader.
I laugh my ass off when people show Powerpoints on machines or platforms other than the one they used to generate them, and images move around, texts gets garbled, and other shit fucks up!!! This never ever happens with PDFs displayed using Adobe Reader.
I have had the darker blue background/white and/or yellow text scheme beaten into me severely, so I find I have trouble deviating. When I make handouts, however, I'll change colors to suit the medium. But as others have said and clearly we've all seen so few actually doing, running through the slides in a similar place on a real projector is just priceless.
Another very useful thing is to print your slides directly to Adobe Acrobat so that you can page through the pdf (in review and as a presentation) and so that it's also easy to hand out the document electronically. I am uncomfortable giving most people my work these days where they could edit it without me knowing. Plus, as PP notes, you never have to worry about loss of formatting.
I would have LOVED to have had access to InDesign, since I did a lot of magazine layout work in college/HS and knew pagemaker inside and out, but that suite is expensive and none of my advisors have ever seen it as necessary. And I haven't bothered learning Keynote because it's so likely that I might go to another lab with PC-only platforms.
The PDF thing is smart though. I could probably do that with one of the other programs I use routinely.
I've been using Lucida Sans, which is ok though I wish the verticals were a little taller.
Thanks for the suggestions all!
Lucida is not a bad sans.
I like to use as many kooky animations and different graphic font styles as possible. The best is when an exciting piece of data flies in from the corner with cartoon wings, growing bigger and bigger until it comes to rest in the middle of the slide. I also like to add clip art to illustrate all kinds of amusing office situations while describing the work.
Not.
White background/Arial, title at same level on each, big pictures and few words for me.
I have to admit, my standard background is a dark gray with light yellow/white writing. I don't think it even exists in the office2007 powerpoint.
I'm not a huge fan of plain white backgrounds - I get migraines and they set me off. What drives me nuts, though, are those folks (usually non-north american students) who put up PARAGRAPHS and just read them off the slide. I'd prefer bouncing animations to that, honestly.
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