Presenting science in front of an audience invariably implies presentation of slides, either as support for the spoken text, or as the main ingredient of the presentation. I always wonder why these slides are so ill-designed: awful contrast, extremely busy, inconsistent lay-out through the slide show, wildly varying font sizes etc. The metaphors that come to mind are that of an elementary school playground or (comparison from a colleague of mine) that of an indoor swimming pool full of children. (picture © Kilian-Nakamura.com 2007).But we scientists are amateurs with respect to design of graphics. So let us see how the professionals do this.

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