Guidances for STAR presentations

 This blog documents guidances, including requirements and suggestions, for STAR presentations. 


Guidance on using italic vs. roman fonts for symbols: Guidances
  • Note: it should be written as $p$+$p$ and $p$+Au, etc, which is different from the guidance

Title page

 The presenter is required to add the following:
  • Speaker's name, and “On behalf of the STAR Collaboration” or “For the STAR Collaboration”
  • Speaker's institution name and/or logo
  • DOE logo: please add "Supported in part by" above the DOE logo. Logos from other funding agencies are encouraged to be added to as well
    • It is preferred to use the DOE logo with the text "Office of Science"
  • STAR logo (some DOE & STAR examples can be found here)
  • Conference name/logo, date and location
These also apply to posters.

Footer
It is suggested to add the speaker name, conference name and date, slide number, and/or STAR logo. Institution name or logo should not be added.


Tips for slides

Here are more tips for preparing your slides:
  • Have consistent capitalization of your slide’s titles. We don’t care if its just the first word, or every word, just keep it consistent
  • You can use any font you like, but try and stick to at most 2 for the presentation, but the font size should not be less the 20pt
  • All plots need axis labels with units and STAR or STAR preliminary on them.  Include a label giving the collision system and energy. Avoid excessive empty space in your figures or around their edges. Reduce the ranges of your axes as much as reasonably possible 
  • Don’t use yellow or light green - it may look good on your screen but they do not project
  • Please try to use both color, symbol shape and filled/hollow symbols on your graphs. As an example, while for many of us red/blue is easily distinguishable some people are color blind and cannot differentiate - using different marker symbols in addition mean all the audience can distinguish your different data points. 
  • If you have more than 3 plots on a slide you have too many and no-one will be able to take in all the information
  • Have one, and only one, intended take-away message for each slide. It should be highlighted in some fashion from the rest of the text on the slide. I should be able to walk into the room, take one look at a slide and be able to tell someone immediately what the message of the slide is. If you have more then one key message, your slide is too busy and the audience won’t follow
  • Try to make figures as large as possible. The auditoriums are often large and we all sit at the back and many have bad eyesight
  • Try and use bullets not whole sentences. You want the audience listening to you, not desperately trying to read all the text on your slide. The slides are meant to support the narration of the speaker, not make the speaker superfluous
  • If you have more than 1 slide per minute you have WAY to many! Your audience are likely seeing your results for the first time, you need to give them time to digest what’s plotted - what the axes are etc - before they can digest what the scientific message of the data is
  • Check that figure axis labels don’t extend off of the canvas (this often happen for superscript and subscripts) and that the text doesn’t run into the axis tick marks. Use high quality figures, not low resolution bitmaps

Tips for posters

Here are more tips for preparing your poster:
  • If you include your abstract on your poster its OK to change it a little, to reflect what you are actually going to show, rather than what you hoped to show several months back. If you make a major change to the abstract please make sure that your PWG convener is aware that you have done this. The same goes for the poster title, its OK to tweak it a little.
  • Have consistent capitalization of your poster title and section headings. We don’t care if its just the first word, or every word, just keep it consistent
  • Don’t overcrowd your poster with text and figures. People want to browse all the posters and won’t be willing to stand there and read what amounts to a long research paper. You should try and convey one or two key messages.
  • You can use any font you like, but try and stick to at most 2 for the poster. The fonts need to be large. A good rule of thumb is if you print it out on A4/US letter size paper you should be able to read it easily. If you can’t when printed out poster size you won’t be able to read it from a few feet away, which is bad. You are expecting a crowd around you poster so you need to be able to read it from a distance
  • All plots need axis labels with units and STAR or STAR preliminary on them.  Include a label giving the collision system and energy. Avoid excessive empty space in your figures or around their edges. Reduce the ranges of your axes as much as reasonably possible. 
  • Don’t use yellow or light green - it may look good on your screen but they does not print very well
  • Please try to use both color, symbol shape and filled/hollow symbols on your graphs. As an example, while for many of us red/blue is easily distinguishable some people are color blind and cannot differentiate - using different marker symbols in addition mean all the audience can distinguish your different data points. 
  • Have one, and only one, intended take-away message for each section fo your poster. It should be highlighted in some fashion from the rest of the text on the slide. I should be able to walk up to poster, take a quick look and be able to tell someone immediately what the key messages are.
  • Try to make figures as large as possible - you can frequently convey a lot more with a figure than you can with a wall of text.
  • Try and use bullets not whole sentences. You want to use the poster to encourage people to discuss your results with you.
  • Check that figure axis labels don’t extend off of the canvas (this often happen for superscript and subscripts) and that the text doesn’t run into the axis tick marks. Use high quality figures, not low resolution bitmaps. Remember this is going to be printed out much larger than usual