LSC Slides: Design Tips
LSC will be pleased to design your slide at no additional cost. LSC will also gladly accept pre-made 35mm slides for presentation at its shows, but no discounts will be given for pre-made slides.
Size of Slides
If you are submitting pre-designed content to be placed on a slide, please be aware that slides have a 3 wide-to-2 tall aspect ratio. You can achieve this image size in most computer programs by selecting landscape mode on letter paper, and then setting the left and right margins to 0.5" and the top and bottom margins to 0.9" (for a printed region 10.00" wide by 6.66" tall).
Usage of standard margins or portrait mode will cause your information to be presented smaller on the screen, as it will not completely fill the available slide area.
Design
We recommend that you use large fonts (at least 24 pts in size) so that your text will be large enough to be read throughout the auditorium. If you submit your slide in PhotoShop format, be sure to include all the fonts needed to render your slide.
For best impact, use at most two fonts on your slide: one for the large attention grabbing text and one for the information being presented. This page, for example, uses Arial at different sizes for section headings and text.
Make the important parts of your slide (title, time, date, etc.) stand out by spacing them off from the rest of the information on the slide, and by using a larger font size. Bold fonts and iconic symbols will also draw attention to the important parts of a slide.
Slides present best when they have light-colored text and artwork on a dark background.
Questions?
If you have questions about our policies or about electronic submission of material, please call us at (617) 253-3791 or send us e-mail at lsc-slides@mit.edu.