12.4: Visual Support

In her presentation, Authenticity: Who You Are is Non-Negotiable, Caroline Wanga, former Target executive, calls slides "corporate comfort food" (Wanga, 2020). Many business presentations include the use of visual aids in a slide format. If your presentation includes slides and images, they must be clear, compelling, and well-organized. When making slides, make sure to include these five elements: organization, titles & text, visual design, content, and audience experience.

Organization

Your slide deck must be logically organized to match the order of your presentation. Make sure that information is presented in a logical way. For example, if you’re talking about something that happens in a sequence, make sure it’s in the correct order in your slides. And present information based on its importance. The size and list format of key points, sub-points and sub-subpoints should be consistent with their importance.

Titles & Text

Consistent: Throughout your slide deck, titles, and text should be consistent in title & text size, shape, placement, bullet & heading hierarchy, and formatting. If any of this does change, it should be an intentional design choice that reflects the presentation. Be especially careful with team projects – it’s easy to lose consistency when multiple people create the slides.

Brief: Your slides are not a script. If you include too much information on them, your audience will be reading, not listening to you. Slides should reinforce your key points, highlighting only the most important information. Share the rest verbally – anecdotes, smaller details and extra information.

 Pro Tip: Use the "6 by 6 rule." The 1-6-6 Method recommends that each slide have a maximum of 1 idea, 6 bullet points, and 6 words per bullet.  

Fonts: Your audience might have less-than-perfect vision or a small device, so make the type easy to read. If you’re not sure which font to use, avoid fancy decorative fonts and use a standard font like Arial, Helvetica, or Times. Unless you’re a trained designer, limit the number of fonts you use to about three per slide deck. Use high-contrast colors for text, such as black on white or white on navy blue. If you’re placing text on an image, use a solid background color in the text box.

We recommend using at least size 32 for your text. If you’re using a font size smaller than 32, test your slides to make sure the text is visible from the back of the room or on a small device.

Spelling & Grammar: Checking your spelling and grammar! (Most presentation apps include spell-check tools.) Typos and grammar errors make you look sloppy and unprofessional.

Animations: You can use the app’s animation tools to move objects and text on, off, or around a slide. You’ve probably seen slides with bullet points that appear one at a time. Animations are useful when you want to gradually reveal information. For example, if you want the audience to focus on one point at a time or when you want to ask a question before showing the answer. Limit the number of animations you use, and avoid whimsical or unnecessary ones – they can make your slides annoying and unprofessional.

Transitions: You can use transitions, like fade-in or fade-out, when moving from one slide to the next. To avoid distracting your audience, don’t use too many different types of transitions, and avoid overly dramatic transitions. Just like animations, a little goes a long way.

Visual design

You don’t have to be a designer to make professional slides – most apps include professionally designed templates, or you can start with a blank slide. Whichever you choose, make sure the visual design supports your content and strengthens your message. Slides should relate to each other visually: colors, layout, text, and images should be consistent.

Consistent: All slides should have a consistent design as though they were created by one person, not cobbled together from multiple sources. If any of this does change, it should be an intentional design choice that reflects the presentation. Be especially careful during team projects – it’s easy to lose consistency when multiple people create the slides.

Alignment: Keep slides looking clean and professional by aligning various text or image elements. For example, text is almost always left-aligned (except for captions and titles). Space text and images so they’re balanced and visually pleasing. PowerPoint shows alignment markings to help with this.

Branding: Branded elements make your slides look professional. You can use your brand’s colors and logo on the title page and/or at the top or bottom of each slide. Your branding may include fonts, text size and color. Whatever you choose, make sure all text is easy to read and not distracting.

Images: Human brains love images! Include images in your slides to add interest and explain key points. Make sure every image is high quality, high resolution, relevant and appropriate, large enough to be easily seen from afar, not stretched or distorted, and free of watermarks. Single images are generally better than collages because you want slides to be uncluttered. No matter how cute they are, don’t include images that are unprofessional or unrelated to your subject – such as emojis, minion pictures, and bad clip art.

Charts & Graphs: Well-displayed information can enhance your audience’s understanding and help to convince them that you’re a professional expert. Charts and graphs are fantastic ways to show data, describe relationships, and help your audience understand a key point. Make sure the labels and titles are large enough to be easily read, and remove unnecessary details; you can verbally explain details and background information. If your presentation includes handouts, you can show the basic chart or graph on screen and add a more detailed version in the handout. See Which chart, or visual should I use? below for examples and additional guidelines.

Content

Complete: Your presentation should include at least one slide for each key point. Make sure the most important information of your presentation is on your slides.

Makes sense  Information presented is well-researched & makes sense. Your content should also be interesting or exciting.

Fits audience: Assume that your audience is smart like you, but doesn’t have specialist knowledge. Take the time to explain anything that the majority of people might not know.

Citations & References: For facts, quotes, or other statistics, you may want to include your source on the slide, especially if it adds credibility. Otherwise, sources (including for images) are listed in 1) the notes section; and 2) in a list of sources at the end of your presentation.

Authorship: Include your full name at the start of your slides. You may want to include your name and contact information on your last slide.

Engages the left & right brain: Audience members engage and remember better when you engage the “left brain” – logic, facts, science, numbers, and hard data – and the “right brain” – emotion, color, artistic, and sensory information like music, videos, and other media.

Audience experience

This element is a bit different from the ones above because it focuses on the live integration of your slides and your presentation.

Slides enhance the presentation: Remember that you’re the star of the show, and your slides are there to support your delivery. (They should not distract from your delivery.) For this reason, it’s important to ensure that you don’t use the slides as a teleprompter – always practice and thoroughly know your entire presentation and slideshow.

Number of slides is reasonable: As a general rule, 1-2 slides per minute is appropriate. Practice delivering your presentation to ensure you’re not rushing through too many slides or forcing the audience to stare a the same slide for several minutes.

Agenda/Overview: Longer or more complex presentations often include an agenda or overview slide. Shorter presentations typically don’t use them.

Animations & transitions executed: When practicing your presentation, remember which slides have animations or transitions, and practice advancing your slides at the right time. Sometimes presenters get caught up in their content and forget to move the slides ahead. This is especially common during online presentations.

Which graph, chart, or visual should I use?

You can easily make charts and graphs for your presentation using Excel or Google Spreadsheets. Add the data to the spreadsheet, then decide which type of chart or graph to use. No matter what type you use, always include a title, clear labels, and high-contrast colors that are visible to all users. For example, many people can’t see the difference between red and green, so avoid using them together.

Here are the most common types:

Using other people’s images

You can use your own images in your presentations. You can also use downloaded images, but be careful to use copyright-free images and credit them properly.

Many images that you see online are copyrighted, meaning you can’t use them without the creator’s permission. A lot of those images have watermarks to make sure people don’t use them or pay to use them. Don’t use watermarked images—it’s illegal and unethical. 

Many high-quality images are freely available online. Here are some places to find them:

1. Burst

2. Pexels

3. Unsplash

4. Pixabay

5. Flicker – Creative Commons license

6. Google: Enter your search words and click Search. Then click Images, and Tools (underneath the search bar). Then click Usage Rights and select Creative Commons Licenses.

Attributions:

Content for this section, , inclusive of images, was adapted (with minor additions) from

Business Presentation Skills Copyright © 2021 by Lucinda Atwood and Christian Westin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted. 

References:

Wanga, C. & Management Leadership for Tomorrow (MLT). (2020, April 29). Authenticity: Who You are is Non-Negotiable [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAIiqOG4KBU