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Chapter 17: Enhancing Presentations with Slides and Other Visuals
This chapter completes the coverage of presentations with advice on creating effective presentation slides
and supporting materials such as handouts.
CHAPTER OUTLINE
Planning Your Presentation Visuals
Selecting the Type of Visuals to Use
Verifying Your Design Plans
Choosing Structured or Free-Form Slides
Advantages and Disadvantages of Structured Slides
Advantages and Disadvantages of Free-Form Slides
Designing Effective Slides
Designing Slides Around a Key Visual
Selecting Design Elements
Color
Artwork
Typefaces and Type Styles
Maintaining Design Consistency
Creating Effective Slide Content
Writing Readable Content
Creating Charts and Tables for Slides
Adding Animation and Multimedia
Functional Animation
Transitions and Builds
Hyperlinks
Multimedia Elements
Integrating Mobile Devices in Presentations
Completing Slides and Support Materials
Creating Navigation and Support Slides
Creating Effective Handouts
Learning Catalytics is a “bring your own device” student engagement, assessment, and classroom
intelligence system. It allows instructors to engage students in class with real-time diagnostics. Students
can use any modern, web-enabled device (smartphone, tablet, or laptop) to access it. For more
information on using Learning Catalytics in your course, contact your Pearson Representative.
LECTURE NOTES
Section 1: Planning Your Presentation Visuals
Learning Objective 1: Explain the role of visuals in business presentations, and list the types of visuals
commonly used.
Visuals can improve the quality and impact of any presentation by creating interest and illustrating points
that are difficult to explain with words alone.
They add variety and increase the audience’s ability to absorb and remember information.
However, don’t make the mistake of thinking that your visuals are a presentation:
Particularly when using presentation software, it’s easy to fall into the trap of letting the slides
take center stage.
Your message is the presentation, not your visuals; your visuals are there to help support and
clarify what you have to say.
Selecting the Type of Visuals to Use
You can select from a variety of visuals to enhance presentations, each with unique advantages and
disadvantages:
Prezis are the dominant example of nonlinear presentations:
Advantages: Flexibility, the ability to incorporate video and other media elements, and a more
dynamic look and feel than conventional slide shows
Potential disadvantages: Fewer design options, the chance of viewers “losing the plot” as the
presenter jumps from topic to topic, and the possibility of viewers feeling dizzy or even
getting motion sickness
Slides created with PowerPoint and similar programs are the mainstay of most business presentations:
Advantages: Relatively easy to create and edit (at least for simple slides), designs are easy to
customize, slides are easy to incorporate into online meetings and webcasts
Potential disadvantages: Linear nature of presentations (although slide shows don’t
necessarily have to be linear), and the “death by PowerPoint” problem (slide after slide of
dull bullet lists or text-heavy slides)
Overhead transparencies are seriously old school, but they do have advantages:
You can create them with nothing more than a marking pen.
You can write on them during a presentation.
They never malfunction.
However, you need to stand next to the projector during the presentation, and you may be
hard-pressed to find a projector these days.
Chalkboards and whiteboards are effective tools for recording points made during small-group
sessions.
With digital whiteboards, you can print and email copies of whatever is written, too.
Flip charts are another dependable, low-tech tool for meetings and presentations. You can record
comments and questions during a presentation, create a “group memory” during brainstorming
sessions, and keep track of all the ideas the team generates.
Be creative when choosing other visuals to support your presentation. Some possibilities:
Video of a focus group talking about your company
Samples of a product or material, which lets the audience experience your subject directly
Mock-ups and models to help people envision what the final creation will look like
Software to show a new product’s design
Screencasts that shows the software in action
On-screen annotations and an audio track to explain what is happening on-screen
Verifying Your Design Plans
After choosing the medium or media for your visuals, think through your presentation and plan
carefully before creating anything. Review the plan for each visual and follow these steps:
Ask yourself how it will help your audience understand and appreciate your message.
Ensure your presentation style is appropriate for the subject matter, audience, and setting.
Double-check any cultural assumptions that might be misinformed.
Let simplicity be your guide:
Creating simple materials often takes less time, and time is a precious commodity.
Simple visuals reduce the chances of distraction and misinterpretation.
The more complex your presentation, the more likely something might go wrong.
Use your time wisely.
Decide up front how much visual design is sufficient and then stop when you get there.
Rehearse your presentation.
Use your time wisely; presentation software can be a blackhole of wasted time and energy.
Class discussion question: Do you need slides or Prezis for every presentation? How much information
can you share strictly through the spoken word before you should resort to visual supports?
Section 2: Choosing Structured or Free-Form Slides
Learning Objective 2: Explain the difference between structured and free-form slides, and suggest when
each design strategy is more appropriate.
The most important design choice you face when creating slides is whether to use conventional structured
slides or the looser, free-form slides.
Both design strategies have advantages and disadvantages, and one or the other can be a better choice for
specific situations.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Structured Slides
Structured slides follow the same basic format throughout the presentation; in fact, they’re usually
based directly on the templates, which provides some advantages:
Fast and easy to create: simply choose a design theme, select a template, and start typing
More practical for routine presentations such as status updates
Can be more effective at conveying complex ideas or sets of interrelated data
More effective as stand-alone documents (“slideuments”) that people can read on their own,
without a presenter, although this is a suboptimal way to present information in general
However, structured slides have potential disadvantages:
Mind-numbing, with text-heavy slides that all look alike
Focused on delivering information without considering how the audience can convert that
information into usable meaning
Advantages and Disadvantages of Free-Form Slides
The goal of free-form slide design is to overcome the drawbacks of text-heavy structured design by
fulfilling three criteria for successful presentations:
Provide complementary information through both textual and visual means.
Limit the amount of information delivered at any one time to prevent cognitive overload.
Help viewers process information by identifying priorities and connections.
With appropriate imagery, free-form designs can also:
Create a more dynamic and engaging experience for the audience.
Excite and engage.
Motivate, educate, and persuade.
In addition to these benefits, however, free-form slides have three potential disadvantages:
Effectively designing slides with both visual and textual elements is more creatively
demanding and more time-consuming than simply typing text into preformatted templates.
Free-form slide designs require more preparation and practice on the part of the speaker.
Dividing information into smaller chunks can make it difficult to present complex subjects in
a cohesive, integrated manner.
Effectively designed free-form slides should still be unified by design elements such as:
Color
Typeface selections
Visual messages
Textual messages
Section 3: Designing Effective Slides
Learning Objective 3: Outline the decisions involved in using a key visual and selecting color, artwork,
and typefaces to create effective slide designs.
“Death by PowerPoint” refers to people being bored to metaphorical death by mind-numbing
presentations.
The problem is not with the tools, however, but how they are used.
In addition to the temptation to pack too much information onto every slide, “slideument” hybrids try to
function as both presentation slides and readable documents.
Slides by themselves should be useless to an audience without the speaker, because good slides are there
to support the speaker.
The ideal solution is to create an effective slide set and a separate handout document that provides
additional details and supporting information.
However, if creating slideuments is your only option for some reason, be sure to emphasize clarity and
simplicity.
Designing Slides Around a Key Visual
With both structured and free-form design strategies, it is often helpful to structure specific slides
around a key visual that helps organize and explain the points you are trying to make. Two examples:
A pyramid suggests a hierarchical relationship.
A circular flow diagram emphasizes that the final stage in a process loops back to the
beginning of the process.
Selecting Design Elements
When designing and creating slides, always keep the audience’s experience in mind: what will it be
like to view this slide while listening to a speaker?
As you select the design elements for your slides and create content for each slide, recall the
previously discussed six principles of effective design:
Consistency
Contrast
Balance
Emphasis
Convention
Simplicity
Color
Color is a critical design element, far more than mere decoration. Effective use of color:
Grabs the viewer’s attention
Emphasizes important ideas
Creates contrast
Isolates slide elements
Sends powerful nonverbal messages
Color can also play a key role in the overall acceptance of your message. Color visuals can
account for:
60% increased chance of an audience’s acceptance or rejection of an idea
80% increase in willingness to read
75% enhancement in learning and improvement in reading
Color choices can also stimulate various emotions. Remember, however, that color has different
meanings in certain cultures, so when creating slides for international audiences, research these
cultural differences.
Artwork
Every slide has two layers or levels of visual elements: the background and foreground.
The background often stays the same from slide to slide, particularly with structured designs.
Issues to keep in mind when using a background include:
The less your background does, the better.
Keep backgrounds open, spacious, and simple.
Cluttered or flashy backgrounds tend to distract from your message.
The background needs to stay in the background; it shouldn’t compete with foreground
elements.
Backgrounds can be too busy to understand.
Some backgrounds are too playful for business use.
You don’t need to use a background, except perhaps a solid color to set type and images
against.
The foreground contains the unique text and graphic elements that make up each individual slide.
When creating the foreground, consider that artwork can be either functional or decorative.
Functional artwork includes:
Photos
Technical drawings
Charts
Other visual elements containing information that is part of your message
In contrast, decorative artwork doesn’t deliver textual or numerical information, but can be
helpful if it:
Establishes an appropriate emotional tone
Amplifies the message of a slide; simple, high-impact images are easier to remember than
text
Decorative artwork is unhelpful if it:
Doesn’t add value
Is off topic
Conveys an unprofessional image
Pulls viewer attention away from the essential elements on a slide
Decorative artwork is usually the least important element of any slide, but it often causes the most
trouble. Don’t include decorative artwork that gives your slides an unprofessional, cartoony
appearance.
Typefaces and Type Styles
When selecting typefaces and type styles for slides, follow these guidelines:
Avoid script or decorative typefaces, except for limited, special uses.
Use serif typefaces with care and only with larger text.
Limit the number of typefaces to one or two per slide.
When using thinner typefaces, use boldface so letters won’t look washed out.
Avoid most italicized type; it is usually difficult to read when projected.
Avoid all-capitalized words and phrases.
Allow extra white space between lines of text.
Be consistent with typefaces, type styles, colors, and sizes.
Make sure type is readable from everywhere in the room.
Maintaining Design Consistency
Don’t force viewers to repeatedly figure out the meaning of design elements by making arbitrary
changes from slide to slide.
Presentation software makes consistency easy to achieve, particularly for structured slide designs.
The less work readers have to do to interpret your slide designs, the more attention they can pay to
your message.
Class discussion question: Can making your slides more visually appealing and attractive (aside from
functional improvements in readability and so forth) help you get your message across to the audience?
Why or why not?
Section 4: Creating Effective Slide Content
Learning Objective 4: Explain how to create effective slide content.
When creating effective slide content, remember to watch out for information overload.
When slides have too much content—textual, visual, or both—viewers can’t process the incoming
information fast enough to make sense of it, and they will eventually tune out.
Keep your slides clear and easy to grasp, and pace the flow of information at a speed that lets people
connect your ideas from one slide to the next.
Writing Readable Content
To choose effective words and phrases for slide content, think of the text on slides as a guide to the
content, not the content itself. Stuffing slides with too much text creates several problems:
It overloads the audience with too much information, too fast.
It takes attention away from the speaker by forcing people to read more.
It requires the presenter to use smaller type, making the slides even harder to read.
Slide text should not display your entire speaking script or highlight every point you intend to make.
Instead, slide text serves as the headings and subheadings for your presentation.
You primarily want your audience to listen, not read. Use slides to:
Highlight key points.
Summarize and preview your message.
Signal major shifts in thought.
Illustrate concepts.
Help create interest in your spoken message.
When writing content for text slides, keep your message short and simple:
Limit each slide to one thought, concept, or idea (except when you specifically need to
connect two or more ideas)
Limit text content to four or five lines with four or five words per line.
Don’t show a large number of text-heavy slides in a row; give the audience some visual
relief.
Write short, bulleted phrases rather than long sentences.
Use sentences only when you need to share a quotation or some other text item verbatim.
List items in parallel grammatical form to facilitate quick reading.
Use the active voice.
Include short, informative titles.
The more information a visual can convey, the fewer words you need.
If the audience can benefit from additional information, provide those details in handouts.
Creating Charts and Tables for Slides
Just as text needs to be simplified for projection, so do many charts, graphs, tables, and other visual
elements.
Detailed visuals can be too dense and complicated for presentations. Follow these guidelines:
Reduce the detail. Eliminate anything that is not absolutely essential to the message.
Simplify. Complex visuals are difficult to interpret on screen.
Shorten numbers (if doing so doesn’t hide essential details).
Limit the amount of data shown. Line graphs should have no more than two or three lines;
bar charts look crowded with more than five or six bars; and tables are difficult to read if they
have too many rows or columns.
Highlight key points. Use arrows, boldface type, and color to direct your audience’s eyes to
the main point of a visual. Summarize the intent of the graphic in one clear title.
Adjust the size and design. Modify the size of a graphic to accommodate the size of a slide.
Leave plenty of white space and use colors that stand out from the slide’s background.
Adding Animation and Multimedia
Presentation software offers a wide array of options for livening up your slides, including:
Sound
Animation
Video clips
Transition effects from one slide to the next
Hyperlinks to websites and other resources
Make sure that any effects you use support your message.
Always consider the impact that all these effects will have on your audience members.
Animation and special effects can be grouped into four categories:
Functional animation
Transitions and builds
Hyperlinks
Multimedia
Software packages offer numerous tools for moving and changing things on screen; just as static
graphic elements can be either functional or decorative, so too can animated elements.
You can control every aspect of the animation, so it’s easy to coordinate the movement with the points
you’re making in your presentation.
Use animation in support of your message, not for decoration or because it looks cool.
Slide transitions control the motion as one slide replaces another on-screen:
Subtle transitions ease your viewers’ gaze from one slide to the next.
However, many of the transitions are like miniature animated shows and are distracting.
If you use a transition effect, use the same one throughout the presentation and choose the
effect carefully.
Aim for a smooth, subtle effect that is easy on the eye.
And unless a sound effect is integral to the message, don’t add audio to a transition.
Builds control the release of text, graphics, and other elements on individual slides.
This helps draw the audience’s attention to the point being discussed and keeps them from reading
ahead. They are much more useful than transitions, when used with care and thought.
The point of a build is to release information in a controlled fashion, not to distract or entertain the
audience. Stick with the subtle, basic options for builds.
A hyperlink instructs your computer to jump to another slide in your presentation, to a website, or to
another program. Hyperlinks are an effective way to customize presentations. Hyperlinks can be:
Simple underlined text
Invisible hotspots in graphical elements
Clearly labeled action buttons
Other advantages to hyperlinks include the options to:
Click an action button and jump right to the two or three most important slides.
Switch from the indirect approach to the direct approach, or vice versa.
Adjust your presentation at a moment’s notice—and look polished and professional while you
do it.
Multimedia elements offer the ultimate in active presentations.
Using audio and video clips can be an effective way to complement your live message.
Keep these elements brief and relevant, as supporting points for your presentation.
Integrating Mobile Devices in Presentations
Smartphones and tablets offer a variety of ways to enhance presentations, such as:
Broadcasting your slides to audience members in case they can’t see the main screen
Eliminating a conventional projection system entirely
Broadcasting a live presentation to mobile users anywhere in the world
Section 5: Completing Slides and Support Materials
Learning Objective 5: Explain the role of navigation slides, support slides, and handouts.
Just as with messages, review slides and other visuals for:
Content
Style
Tone
Readability
Clarity
Conciseness
Also, make sure that all visuals are:
Readable. Can text be read from the back of the room? Does text stand out from the background?
Consistent. Are colors and design elements used consistently?
Simple. Are all the slides and the presentation as simple as possible? Can you eliminate any
slides?
Audience centered. Are the message and the design focused on the audience?
Clear. Is the main point of each slide obvious? Easy to understand?
Concise and grammatical. Is text written in concise phrases? Are bulleted phrases grammatically
parallel?
Focused. Does each slide cover only one thought, concept, or idea? Does the slide support the key
points of the message? Is the audience’s attention drawn to the key sections of a chart or diagram?
Fully operational. Have you verified every slide in your presentation? Do all the animations and
other special effects work as intended?
You want the audience to listen to you, not study the slides; make sure your slides are not distracting.
Using a slide sorter makes it easy to:
Add and delete slides.
Reposition slides.
Check for design consistency.
Preview animation and transition effects.
Experiment with design elements.
For important presentations, consider having backup equipment on standby, loaded with your
presentation, and ready to go. At the very least, have enough printed handouts ready to give the audience.
Creating Navigation and Support Slides
Once the content slides are complete, enhance your presentation with a few additional slides that add
“finish” to your presentation and provide additional information to benefit your audience.
Make a good first impression on your audience with one or two title slides. A title slide can contain
the following elements:
Title of your presentation (and subtitle, if appropriate)
Your name
Your department affiliation (for internal audiences)
Your company affiliation (for external audiences)
Presentation date
Appropriate graphic elements
Use agenda and program detail slides to communicate the agenda for your presentation and any
additional information that your audience might need, such as wireless network logins.
By answering such questions at the beginning of your presentation, you’ll minimize disruptions later
and help the audience stay focused on your message.
Use navigation slides to tell your audience where you’re going and where you’ve been.
This technique is most useful in longer presentations with several major sections.
As you complete each section, repeat the slide but indicate which material has been covered
and which section you are about to cover.
Creating Effective Handouts
Handouts, any printed materials you give the audience to supplement your talk, should be considered
an integral part of your presentation strategy.
Plan them in tandem with your presentation so that you use each medium as effectively as possible.
Your presentation should:
Paint the big picture.
Convey and connect major ideas.
Set the emotional tone.
Rouse the audience to action.
Your handouts should then carry the rest of the information load, providing the supporting details that
audience members can consume at their own speed, on their own time.
Possibilities for good handout materials include:
Complex charts and diagrams
Articles and technical papers
Case studies
Recommended resources
Copies of presentation slides
Timing the distribution of handouts depends on the content of your handouts, the nature of your
presentation, and your personal preference.
HIGHLIGHT BOX: THE FUTURE OF COMMUNICATION
Holograms
Holograms have an undeniable science-fiction aspect that can make them seem unrealistic to consider as a
business communication medium. However, when viewed from the context of existing communication
technologies that businesses use every day, they don’t seem quite so otherworldly. A telephone is simply a
way to transport someone’s voice, and videoconferencing is a way to transport someone’s voice and
moving, two-dimensional image. Holograms can be considered the next step in this progression:
transporting someone’s moving, three-dimensional image
HIGHLIGHT BOX: THE ART OF PROFESSIONALISM
Being a Team Player
1. Students will have to answer this one honestly for themselves. People who truly prefer to work alone
can have a hard time in a team-based environment.
2. Unprofessionalism in others is no excuse to act unprofessionally, of course. Ultimately, though, it
comes down to individual choice and matters of self-respect and social awareness.
COMMUNICATION CHALLENGES AT DUARTE
Individual Challenge
Students should start with a clear idea of the audience for this presentation, which is potential investors in
this new company, not target customers or property owners. This should help define the desired visual
tone, which is serious and businesslike, since potentially millions of dollars are at stake. A key
consideration is readability; some foreground/background color pairs (such as blue and red) are difficult
to read, so students should test their color choices for readability.
Keep in mind that potential investors have probably seen hundreds of presentations, so they won’t be
dazzled by the visuals, no matter how eye-catching. They want to be impressed and reassured by the
business model, the financial analysis, and the managerial and technical competence of the
entrepreneurial team.
Team Challenge
Students will need to find photos that convey the appropriate visual messages in a compelling way and
that can work well in conjunction with the speaker’s spoken messages. Challenge students to find images
that go beyond well-worn clichés or that are so generic that they are little more than wallpaper. For
health-care costs, for example, a staged photo of a doctor or nurse in uniform doesn’t say very much. In
contrast, a real-life photo of an overcrowded emergency room or a patient who suffered dire
consequences because he or she couldn’t afford medical care would be more effective because it speaks
more directly to the causes and effects of health-care expenses.
