Speaker Preparation

A key element of your SIGGRAPH Asia 2008 presentation is your electronic slide preparation. The audience will base its evaluation of you and your subject matter partly on the appearance of your images. An attractive, legible, and organized presentation will reflect positively on the content, and therefore on you. Please review these basic guidelines to ensure that your SIGGRAPH Asia 2008 presentation is the best it can possibly be:

Timing
Find out how much time is allowed for your presentation. Plan your talk and the number of slides to allow for a relaxed pace. Think of what you would change if the presentation had to be shortened or lengthened. Practice your talk before the conference. Time yourself. Force yourself to slow down a little. A rushed presentation will create more stress for you and won't be compelling. Come to the Speaker Preparation Room to upload your presentation and practice your timing.

Legibility
The technical session rooms at SIGGRAPH Asia 2008 are large, and your presentation must be legible from the back row. If you can stand two meters away from your computer's monitor and easily read your slides, your text is large enough. To achieve this, limit each slide to eight lines of text or less and limit each line of text to 30 characters or less. Use a bold typeface, no smaller than 24 points, with generous line spacing.

Use key words, so that your slides will be quick and easy to read. You want the audience to hear your presentation, while the slides accentuate the points to remember. Use standard fonts. That way your presentation will be truly portable. Incorporate only the essential parts of a diagram and simplify whenever possible. While it is tempting to include detail for the sake of accuracy, too much will make the slide difficult to read and become a distraction. Break up complex diagrams into sections if you can, so that each section can be made larger and therefore more legible.

Capitalisation
Avoid the use of ALL CAPITAL letters. Words written in ALL CAPS are harder to read and take up more space on the screen. Use bold face and italics for emphasis, or use a bright colour such as yellow text when normal body text is white. Underlined text is not recommended.

Colour and Contrast
To maintain consistency in the use of colour and contrast, please use the downloadable PowerPoint Slide Template below. Using the same background colour, text size, text colour, and uniform fonts throughout all the slides makes it easier for the audience to follow the flow of your ideas.

Download the SIGGRAPH Asia 2008 PowerPoint Slide Template

Fast Forward Slide Preparation
For the Technical Papers & Sketches Fast Forward Sessions, you are required to prepare one single auto-advanced slide. We have prepared two examples of auto advanced slides:

Example Slide 1

Example Slide 2

These are examples only. They do not provide guidelines on timings and design. Please refer to the slide preparation instructions you have received.