cv - Is use of unconventional design elements or layout something frowned upon in academic context?

I quite enjoy paying attention to how I design my documents and presentations. I usually spend hours thinking over and designing my slides for a workshop or presentation, so that they are aesthetically pleasing and as intuitive as possible. Likewise I recently started revising my CV I figured and I wanted to make it stand out a bit more. (Just to make it clear I don't mean making a clown of a document but just better use of colors, contrast and design elements.)

I have long wondered whether or not this is something that can backfire, since most documents in academic context are extremely plain, at least in my experience. It's very common to see the default Powerpoint slides (white bg, black arial text) or something as hideous as that.

My question is as follows: is putting time and effort into design of academic documents something that can backfire? Will I risk being prejudged with first impressions such as "well he put much effort in the presentation his documents, perhaps because the content is sub-par"?

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I realize that the question might be somewhat subjective from person to person but I encourage everyone to consider it in terms of this SE blog entry: Good subjective vs Bad subjective.

Answer

It all comes down to a cost/benefit analysis. But, there is little risk to improve the design, graphics and typography of your documents (theses, figures, presentations). There is little risk that it backfires if you present a higher-quality document. In fact, the only case I can think of is if it seems that form took over content: i.e., if you have a very shiny designed presentation with just-meh scientific content, the contrast might draw attention.

One thing that might be a problem is if you put too much theatrics, 3D effects, animations, cartoons… I had a colleague who used every single “animation” possible (it was the early days of Apple's Keynote and its nice 3D effects) in the same presentation, and it was simply too much. It distracted people from his message.

Finally, coming back to the cost/benefit analysis: I believe that as in everything, 20% of the work can get you 80% of the reward if you choose wisely. People will have different pet peeves, but the areas which I think you should polish for presentation slides are:

• Graphics quality: no pixelated crap


• Consistency between graphics and text, and self-consistency of graphics: same quantities reported and plotted, same units, consistency between graph scales (as much as possible), etc. Sometimes you take pictures from an earlier paper, and they don't quite match what you are showing with them. Avoid things like “graph on the left is concentration, graph on the right is volume fraction” when they can be converted straightforwardly.



• Careful about background colors: to me, this makes the different between decent slides and good slides (for the presentation, not for the scientific content). If you use a colored background (not saying you should), don't include graphics with white background. Try to use graphics with transparent background (easy with vector graphics, use PNG with alpha channel for bitmap images).


• If visualization requires it, use movies to show a complex system: time evolution of spatial distribution, autorotation of a structure you present if it makes it clearer, etc.