Skip to Main Content Carnegie Mellon University Libraries

PhD Dissertation Defense Slides Design

General tips for slide design

Use a Plain Background

For engineering, a plain, white background is generally ideal for dissertation proposals and defenses. Don't pick a template that is too busy and distracting.

 

A good example slide with a simple font over a plain white background  A bad example slide with bolded colored text over a color background 

 

 

Remember to Add Page Numbers

Having page numbers in your slides will allow your advisors and peers to give comments. During your presentation, the committee members can use page numbers to reference specific slides for their questions. 

 

A screenshot of Microsoft PowerPoint with the insert page numbers tool circled

 

 

Less is more

Don't put too many words on one slide (no more than 20 words per slide, in general).

When words are inevitable, highlight the keywords in each sentence (see examples from I. Daniel Posen's and L. Cook's slides)

 

A slide filled with text but keywords are bolded

A slide filled with text but keywords are bolded and color-coded

 

 

Take advantage of animations

Use animations to explain complicated ideas in figures, tables, etc. You can use different slides instead of the animation functions in MS PowerPoint; it will avoid overlapping text boxes or pictures when converted to PDF. 

Below is an example from C. Kolb's defense slides. By a step-by-step revealing process, Kolb was able to explain each detail without the distraction of other results. 

 

A slide showing a scientific figure with empty axes

 A slide showing a scientific figure with axes empty except for a data key

 A slide with a scientific figure complete with bar plots and a data key

 

 

 

Write down your notes 

Write down your notes with either bullet points or full sentences as a script. This can help you to remember what you want to say during your defense. When you are practicing, you won't have to come up with new things to say every time and won't forget what you planned to talk about. 

A slide with full speaker notes listed underneath      

Example 1: slide with notes - exact words to say (C. Mailings 2017)

A slide with brief and bulleted speaker notes underneath

Example 2: slide with notes - bullet points (I. D. Posen 2016) 

 

 

Be smart about the title of each slide

Use descriptive language to summarize the key point of the slide, and avoid using vague terms or the same title for several slides that have different contents.

A good titled slide with a full statement of a scientific observation  A badly titled slide displaying the word introduction