It’s important to make your message visual and that you design visuals that support your presentation rather than distract from it. This chapter provides techniques for using visual aids, including some dos and don’ts when using PowerPoint™.In this chapter:With advancements in technology, many people have become enamoured of multimedia and computer-generated slide presentations. While high-tech tools for visual aids have their place, they are not always the best choice for all presentations.Choose what is best for the situation and never forget that you are the most powerful of all your visual aids: your dress, posture and facial expression.

Making Your Messages Visual

In today’s visual society of TV, computers and films, visuals are essential if you wish to make an impact. Mohamed Ali once said: ‘One in the eye is worth two in the ear.’ While he was referring to boxing, this also applies to making presentations: ‘A picture is worth a thousand words.’

Why Use Visuals?

The average person will remember about 70% of a verbal presentation three hours later and as little as 10% three days later. However, with a visual presentation 85% is remembered three hours later and up to 20% after three days.

Most people’s preferred learning style is visual. They need to visualise what you are saying. Make it easy for them by using visuals. Visual support can often make the difference between the audience staying with you or shrugging their shoulders and losing interest. Use visuals to:

Designing Visuals

Good design aids your credibility and helps with understanding. If you do not have the time or the skills to create your own audio-visual aids, get somebody to do it for you. Use the communications department, a colleague or a design agency. Keep all visual aids simple and uncluttered (see Figure 4)). Always take along a series of low complexity aids (such as handouts) as a backup. Equipment can fail, so you might want to be prepared to go without audio-visual aids at all.

Avoiding Wordy Visuals

Words don’t made good visuals. Your audience is there to listen to you, not to read from a screen or listen to you reading from a screen. The visuals must enhance your communication with your audience.

Techniques For Using Visual Aids

Whenever you show a visual, your audience will stop looking at you and focus on the visual. Be quiet and let your audience look to absorb the information. This is the moment to let the visual do the talking, so don’t compete with it.

Be organised. If you are using transparencies, keep them neatly stacked and in the order you are going to use them. Number them discretely, then if you do drop them it will be easy to put them in the order required.

Fig. 4. Guidelines for designing visual aids.

As a rule show only one piece at a time – only as much as you can explain. Go for small self-contained bites. Then add the next piece and comment on it and so on. Don’t reveal great chunks of information and then talk. As your commentary unfolds let the visual unfold.

Whiteboards And Flipcharts

Flipcharts are excellent to use when you need to record lists of ideas or need to record comments from the audience.

Pages can be torn from the flipchart and stuck around the room to create an expanding display.

The main drawback of using a whiteboard is the lack of any permanent record of what has been written, unless you are using the electronic whiteboard. These require presentable handwriting to make the best use of them. It is usually best to use block capital letters rather than ‘joined up’ lettering (see Figure 5).

Fig. 5. Guidelines for using whiteboards and flipcharts.

Handouts

Handouts can be used to develop the key points from your presentation. Ideally, the content should follow the sequence of your presentation and provide detailed information such as research data, evidence, excerpts and other background information (see Figure 6).

Fig. 6. Guidelines for using handouts.