DESIGN

How do I become a more visual presenter?

A good understanding of visual communication is essential to being an effective presenter. Whether you like it or not, your slides send a message about you and your topic, forming a direct conduit to your audience's brains. Our presentation designers are sharing three simple visualisation principles to get you started in the right direction.

Limit yourself to one idea per slide.

Create focus for yourself and your audience.

Too many speakers think the best way to persuade is to bombard their audience with information. It only seems logical then to use slides should then be used to broadcast as much as information as possible. But in reality it is more effective to make a few points well than to make a lot of points poorly. Consequently, you need to apply a similar focus to your slides. The key to good design lies in embracing constraints and a good one to start with is to limit yourself to a single idea per slide.

Slides are not for text.

You want your audience to listen, not read.

In case you haven't gotten the memo: Text-heavy slides are utterly ineffective and actually work against you during your presentation. You want your audience to listen to you, not read your slides. In case you put text on your slides for yourself, start using the presenter display instead. If you need your presentation to also serve as a standalone document that needs to be understandable without a speaker, you will have to create separate documents.

Slides were never meant as a medium for text.
Research shows that presenting with text-heavy slides is very ineffective. Showing your audience text and bullet points while conveying the same information with spoken words does not work. Instead, they will read ahead disregard you altogether.
Minimize text on your slides and instead move that text into your voiceover.
Slides are most effective when you use the space for simple and thoughtful visuals. Try to visualise your main point and let it stand as a backdrop as you unpack your argument with all the important nuances with your spoken words.

Guide the eye to direct attention.

Use design to set clear focal points.

Have you ever stood in front of an abstract painting that left you confused and just did not speak to you? Perhaps you kept looking for anything recognisable to hold on to, but the painting's shapes and strokes remained meaningless to you.

There are no extra points for enigmatic slides. Instead, showing a few of these in a row is among the quickest ways to make your audience tune out. Conserve your audience's mental energy for listening to you, not for figuring out your slides.

You want to have slides that are quick to figure out and lead the audience through a sequence of hierarchical points, from most to least important. The most common design elements for salience and size and color.