Successful presentations require planning and focus…and one specific part of your presentation that needs a great deal of both is visuals.

Visuals play a significant part in how presentations come across and so it’s important to remember a few things.

In this week’s episode of The Visual Lounge, Matt Pierce, Learning & Video Ambassador, explores how to use effective visuals to enhance presentations. He explains how they should grab the audience’s attention but not distract them from what you’re talking about.

It’s all about letting the audience hear what you say while giving them something visual to connect to.

Learning points from the episode include:

• 00:55 – How Matt first got involved in using more visuals in presentations
• 02:16 - How to define success for visuals in a presentation
• 04:24 – Matt’s one tip to help you improve using images
• 07:59 – Different options for visuals in presentations
• 08:31 – Why visuals are so important
• 10:42 – Why you should try to eliminate as much text as possible from the slides
• 15:35 - Use Contrast. Repetition. Alignment. Proximity. (C.R.A.P.)
• 19:39 - Do your elements and visuals go together?
• 20:56 - Make something memorable
• 22:07 – How to use anchoring to tie visuals with ideas
• 23:51 - How to use dual encoding
• 24:54 – Think about the unexpected and use that to draw attention
• 26:52 – When to turn off your slides when making a point or when you want focused attention
• 27:17 - Where to find great images for slides and presentations

Important links and mentions:

• TechSmith Academy: Learn how to use and create better images and videos (for free): https://academy.techsmith.com
• Article about presentation design: https://medium.com/@dannysmith/good-s...
• Article about anchoring http://www.nlpu.com/Articles/artic28.htm
• Made to Stick Book: https://heathbrothers.com/books/made-...
• TechSmith Assets: https://library.techsmith.com - with one subscription, you can access a whole library of stock images, music, sound effects, video clips, and more