We’ll cover:

• The anatomy of effective scientific slides
• Slides vs. slide-uments: when to use what
• A practical five-step slide design process
• The power of storyboarding in your planning process
• A rapid-fire tour of core visual design principles
• Working backwards: improving existing slides using the five-step approach
• Maximising your message: making title, agenda, content, and conclusion slides work harder for you

This session will be hands-on. Please bring a few examples of your own slides to work on during the exercises. If you don’t have any (yet!), no problem. Sample slides will be provided so everyone can participate (using a broad example to illustrate key ideas).

By the end of this talk, you’ll walk away with a practical design toolbox you can use to make your future slides clearer, more memorable, and more persuasive.

Bonus: many of the same techniques are also useful for graphical abstracts, figures, posters, and other visual science communication.

Who should participate?

Everyone interested in creating impactful scientific presentations is welcome. The event is mainly targeted at PhDs and PostDocs.

The Expert

Suzanne Whitby is a science communication specialist with over 20 years of international experience in communication, training, and facilitation. Since 2012, she has helped scientists and researchers across academia and industry develop the skills and confidence to communicate their work effectively with both expert and non-expert audiences.

Known for her engaging, energetic style and practical approach, Suzanne’s training draws on a diverse background that includes communication consulting, futures thinking, and storytelling. She is also an active science communicator and, when time allows, she researches innovative, experiential science communication tools to foster sustainable thinking and climate action.

Combined, her background, experience, and ongoing practice give her a unique ability to help researchers connect, clarify, and inspire.

Suzanne is the founder of SciComm Success, and delivers workshops both online and in person. She is proudly South African and currently lives in Innsbruck, Austria.