Takahashi method

The Takahashi method is a technique of producing slides for presentations. It is similar to the Lessig method of presentations (credited to professor Lawrence Lessig of Stanford).

It is credited by Masayoshi Takahashi. Compared to a more typical presentation, much fewer words are used rather than sentences. The information density is balanced by the use of many more slides than is typical, each slide being shown for a much shorter duration. The method focuses on having large letters and short words rather than small letters and long words in slides of various presentations.

Further information

Once Takahashi, a programmer, had to give a short presentation at a conference (RubyConf) so he first used the method and found it helpful, at least with Japanese. Takahashi never used PowerPoint or similar software, he uses only text in his slides. He started thinking about how to use the best word for each slide as he took the audience through his presentation. The words or phrases resemble Japanese newspaper headlines rather than sentences which must be read.

The slides use plain text in a visual manner, to help the audience quickly read and understand the material. It's said to be helpful with Japanese and other eastern languages which use non-Latin alphabets.

Many presenters in developer conferences use their own variant on Takahashi. Notably, Audrey Tang's stock presentations at Perl and Open Source conferences have used this method.

External links

• Living large: "Takahashi Method" uses king-sized text as a visual
• http://takahashi.su/ — XUL application for making Takahashi style presentations, requires Mozilla browser

• http://conway.rutgers.edu/~ccshan/wiki/blog/posts/Takahashi/ — package for making Takahashi-style presentation in Beamer (LaTeX)