Use Quality Text Slides For A Professional Presentation
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TRAINING
Have you ever seen a slide presentation that was boring, hard to follow, or seemed to meander from point to point without apparent direction or organization? The color, contrast, and composition—all elements of good photography — may have been great, but most of your mental energy was spent trying to organize the visual images flashed helter skelter on the screen before you.
If you’d like to avoid the kind of slide presentation that produces headaches or, worse yet, induces sleep, why not try this? Organize and cluster your slides around well thought-out, professional text slides.
Text slides contain a simple written or printed message. They are the backbone of slide presentations and provide a professional look. In addition, the process of using text slides helps you crystallize your thinking and organize your pictures into a meaningful message. Such a presentation will keep audience interest high and enable you, the presenter, to better achieve your goals.
It should be obvious, but often is not, that you must use high quality text slides in order to obtain optimum results. The written message flashed on the screen must be:
- Large enough to be seen,
- Legible enough to be read,
- Attractive enough to grab and hold interest,
- Uncomplicated enough to be easily understood.
Planning stage
When planning the production of your text slides, keep in mind the size of the room where you will be showing the slides. If yours is a long training room, then some members of your class or group are going to be a long distance from the screen. The very size of your audience may, of necessity, place some people quite a distance from the screen.
A good text slide—a really professional one — must be easily readable from the back row. If your audience must squint and crane their necks to see, then it probably would be better not to use text slides at all. Other factors to be considered are screen size and the focal length of the projector’s lens.
Text production
Printed text begins as a simple black on white typewritten copy or a computer graphics printout. It may be produced on any good typewriter. Graphs, charts, and diagrams can be produced by computer graphics techniques, or by conventional drafting or art process. Artwork should be in the form of line drawings: black on white with line density no less than .014 of an inch for 8 1/2 X 11inch paper. Be sure to keep all line work of the same density because thin, weak lines will drop out in the final product.
When preparing the text for copying, remember the rule of thumb for text size: If you can read the text on the slide without magnification it will be legible on the screen, providing the screen is large enough for the size of the room.
You can obtain the correct size text by using a typewriter, such as the IBM electronic 75 with an Orator ball element. Use all uppercase (e.g., UPPERCASE, not lowercase) letters for the best results. The text size (5/32) is determined by the ball element (or daisy wheel) selected.
Your text should be centered on a 5 X 7-inch card, or quality paper. The actual dimensions for the text area should be no larger than 2 1/4inches high by 3 1/2-inches wide. That would be 13 typewriter spaces high and 33 Orator characters wide. Even if another element or brand of typewriter is used, the text area must still fit into the specified 2 1/4 X 3 1/2 inches.
Photographing the text will be much easier when it is placed in the same position on each 5 X 7inch card because stops can be set up on the copy stand to register the text on each card in the center of the camera’s viewfinder.
Inexpensive and simple stops can be made by cutting strips from art board and taping them in the proper place on the copy stand. Another method for stops is to use bulletin board pins.
Other considerations
Other guidelines to follow when producing professional quality text slides are simplicity and legibility. We mentioned legibility in the discussion on the rule of thumb for text size on finished slides. If the text is too small or too large on the slide, it will be too small or too large when projected.
While verbosity may be appropriate in some situations, the text appearing on slides should be brief and simple in order to achieve an effective overall presentation. Keep in mind the following suggestions:
- Limit each text slide to one main idea;
- Keep each slide to 15-20 words at the most;
- Omit data that is not absolutely necessary to achieve your objective;
- Use more than one slide if the idea you want to communicate takes more than 15-20 words;
- Keep graphs, charts, and diagrams to two or three curves or items;
- If you plan to use a text slide more than once during the same presentation, insert duplicates instead of sifting through the pile to return to the original.
By all means, do not overlook the creative touch. Clip art, or press-on letters will make your text slides more attractive and give them that something special that characterizes professional work. However, be careful not to .go overboard creatively because too much art will clutter your text slide and obscure the real message.
Camera and film
A good quality 35-mm Single Lens Reflex (SLR) camera with a 50-mm macro lens will work for copying text. The SLR is preferable because you can see the exact area that you will be copying.
Kodak SO279 color slide film is recommended for text slides. This film is available from most Kodak specialty photo dealers. If your dealer doesn’t carry it, he should be able to order it for you. This film is available in 35-mm magazines with 36 exposures.
Exposure and light
The exposure of the text should follow the manufacturer’s recommendations that come with the film. The recommended starting point is to use a 3200K light source and an exposure index of 8. Measure the illumination at the text surface without filters, using incident light readings or reflected light readings from a gray card of 18% reflectance.
Kodak publishes instructions, included with your roll of Kodak SO279 film, that list exposure times, filter factors, and filter choices for various color background with white text.
In my production of text slides, I use a 3200K light source of two 75W quartz, spaced to give even illumination of 320 foot/candles. This gives good coverage for illuminating large articles—approximately a 16 X 20-inch area. This higher illumination level allows for an exposure of 5.6 at one second. This saves time, as compared to using a lower level of light and a slower shutter speed (as slow as 8 seconds). Lower light levels will work satisfactorily, but you will have to run texts to determine your best exposure. Of course another advantage of using the 320 foot/ candle light source is the ability to copy larger documents.
Photo by Jerry Hall
When working out your own technique for text slide production, you will have to experiment and bracket your exposures to find a suitable setting. With the setup I’ve described, I’ve been able to produce text slides with a very crisp background and clear white letters that have considerable snap. This is especially true when the ambient light is extinguished during exposure.
Processing
I have all of my SO279 film processed by a commercial photo lab and it comes back to me in 2 X 2inch mounts, ready for the slide tray. Actually, the film is designed for development in C41 and you can do it in your own lab if you are equipped for C41 processing. When I’ve taken only a few exposures on the roll, the processor I use will cut the roll and return the unused portion. This is a good way to economize when you have only a few text slides at a time.
If you use the entire 36 exposures, the total cost of materials and processing should be less than 30 cents per text slide. That’s not a high price to pay for a professional slide presentation that gets your message across in an interesting and stimulating manner.
