10 Top Tips

10 Tips for… Creating Great Visual Aids for your Presentation

We’ve boiled down all of our advice about visual aids to ten golden rules – follow these and you’ll always have your audience’s attention for the right reason.

1

Do the slides only after you’ve completed your presentation plan and storyboard or you’ll have an overlong, text driven, linear presentation that will lead to dull, text driven slides.

2

If you’re working from an existing PowerPoint presentation, use that as your storyboard and add story structure, edit ruthlessly and remove visual, verbal and text clutter.

3

Use pictures and diagrams before words, and use words as little as possible. Use a short word instead of a long word wherever you can. Use only nouns, verbs and key phrases on your slides.

4

Do your best to stick to 3 words per bullet and 3 bullet-points per slide.

5

Explain jargon TLA’s (Three Letter Acronyms) and technical terms as you use them.

6

Use muted colours with no unnecessarily, complex graphics or animations, that can be seen in any light conditions.

7

Follow a strict slide format: every page is laid out exactly the same, making the whole presentation look very consistent.

8

Make sure that each slide has a single message, which is written out in the title and clearly supported by the words in the body.

9

Use occasional theoretical models & frameworks to structure information: time lines, force field analysis, evaluation of pros and cons, strengths and weaknesses.