So you want to

look good?!

Using Visual Aids

To Your Advantage

FINO Meeting 2006

Hyytiälä / Suomi

16. - 19.11.2006

Michael Froneberg
michael.froneberg@gmail. com
Why use
Visual Aids?
To be able to answer this question, you’ll have to go one step
back. First, think about:

Your Presentation
■ What are your goals?

■ Who are you talking to?

■ Which messages to you want to pass on?

...and all the other stuff David taught you!

To sum it up, a presentation is a situation, where an orator pres-

ents ceratin messages to an audience. In doing so, he makes
use of two tools:

■ didactical an rhethorical methods

■ visual aids (anything from a flipchart

to a multimedia session

As you’ll easily be able to see, the visual aids make up one of

your two main keys to reach the audience with your message.
You really wouldn’t want to loose this key! J
Goals of
Visualization
Perhaps you’re still able to remember the complete list of all the
things we wrote down on our flipchart. Here are the most impor-
tant ones:

■ Catching attention

■ Helping the audience to follow your words

■ Supporting the point you want to make

■ Increasing the chance of memorization

■ Reduction of information complexity

■ Explanation for ideas, tasks, relationships, conclusions,...

■ Illustration of what something looks like

■ Making a professional and competent impression

Remember: In no case should visual aids be used just for their

own sake! Align the quality standards of your presentation with
the expectations of your audience.
What to
Visualize?
Here’s a small hint for presentations in general: To obtain the
necessary knowledge for giving a presentation is not the same
thing as to pass on all taht knowledge!

Step number one

Give your presentation a logical structure. Make sure to point
out key information and messages.

After having structured your presentation, you should be easily

able to know what you want to say and how to do so. But then
again of course – a picture says more than a thousand words.
With visual aids, you can put much more force into the things you
want to say – this means a great opportunity as well as a respon-
sibility at the same time.
How to use
Visual Aids
General Rules
■ Stick to a homogenous layout

■ Use striking headlines

■ Make sure that your key message can be identified

■ Think about your text font and size

■ Limit the amount of information, both on one chart as well

as in the presentation as a whole

■ Be careful on the use of colours

I’ll just have to repeat myself: Whatever you want to do, make
sure that the visualization aids you use serve one goal only: To
reach the audience with your message.
Using
Text Charts
The path of completing your text chart and getting it ready for
your presentation is a path of reduction:

Total amount of knowledge on subject

▼
Goals and audience
▼
Content of Presentation
▼
Key Messages
▼

Visual Aid

Rules for Text Charts

■ One subject per slide

■ The famous 6x6 rule: Six words per line, six lines per slide

■ Keywords, not whole sentences

■ Use a picture if you can: Better to memorize

Pictures and
Diagrams
Whatever type of picture you use, make sure that its content has
something to do with the message you want to pass on! Gener-
ally spoken, pictures, drawings and diagrams have two major
advantages:

■ They can add information to a text

■ They can be a lot better to understand and memorize

Famous last words:

K.I.L.L.E.M.
Keep It Large, Legible and Easy to Memorize

I hope this will all help you! If you have any further questions or
wish to send me some feedback, just write me an email. J

Hope to meet you again somewhere, sometime!

Michael