Improve Your Communication Skills, 2nd Edition

Designing visuals
Working on the visuals can take longer than any other part of 
planning. The important thing to remember is that any aid you 
use is there to help you, not to substitute for you. You are 
not
a 
voice-over accompanying a slide presentation; the pictures are 
there to illustrate your ideas. The audience wants to see 
you
: to 
meet with you, assess you, ask you questions, learn about you. 
They will not have the chance to do any of this if you hide behind 
your visual aids.
Visual aids intrude. The moment you turn on the projector or 
turn to the flipchart, the audience’s attention is on that rather 
than you. A small number of excellent visual aids will have far 
more impact than a large number of indifferent ones. Don’t fall 
into the trap of thinking that every part of the presentation 
should have an accompanying slide.
Make your visuals just that: 
visual
. If you can avoid using 
words, do so. How can you put the information into graphic 
form? Is there a picture you can use to illustrate or suggest what 
you are saying? Words are for listening to. Visual aids are for 
looking at. It really is that simple.
( c) 2011 Kogan Page L imited, All Rights Reserved.

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128 Improve your Communication Skills
Audiences’ expectations of slides are changing. We all know that 
it’s quite easy to produce slides with flashy animation. Many 
people are becoming bored with endless slide shows filled with 
more or less poorly designed slides. Confound your audience’s 
expectations. Use the technology by all means – and then leap 
away from it, galvanising your audience with your own passion 
for your subject. Or be really daring, and work without any slides 
at all.
Rehearsing 
There is a world of difference between thinking your 
presentation through and doing it. You may think you know what 
you want to say, but until you say it you don’t really know. Only 
by uttering it aloud can you test whether you understand what 
you are saying. Rehearsal is the reality check. 
Rehearsal is also a time check. Time acts oddly in 
presentations. It can seem to stop, to drag and – more often than 
not – to race away. The most common time problem I encounter 
with trainees who are rehearsing their presentations is that they 
run out of time. They are astounded when I tell them that time is 
up and they have hardly finished introducing themselves! You 
must 
rehearse to see how long it all takes. Be aware that it will 
6 × 6 × 6
If you 
must
put words on your slides, they should obey this 
design principle.
No more than six lines of text on any slide.
No more than six words on any one line.
The text should be visible 
on a laptop screen
from a 
distance of six metres. (For most fonts, this means a 
minimum size of about 24pt.)
( c) 2011 Kogan Page L imited, All Rights Reserved.

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