Effective Presentations Use Graphics

Slide presentations are known and used as one of the most efficient vehicles for clearly communicating factual and data-driven information to a group. For all but the most detail-oriented people, however, endless bulleted lists of information go literally in one ear and out the other.

So how do you access your audience’s right brain without several years of medical school and a bone saw? The answer is through their eyes: By providing a strong visual stimulus, you can elicit an emotional response from audience members’ right brains, and help them to understand, retain, and even act on the messaging you are delivering.

It’s common to hear people talk about having a particular song stuck in their heads, repeating itself over and over and monopolizing their consciousness for a period of days, or even weeks. This is a prime example of the emotional right brain grabbing onto a creative expression and immersing itself, and this temporary but powerful phenomenon can help you make your presentation resonate with your audience.

Just remember, you need to demonstrate your facts in addition to stating them:

• If you’re talking about traffic problems in a specific metropolitan area, make the primary image on your slide an aerial photo of the 5:30 daily rush hour gridlock that’s adding stress to everyone’s commute.


• When discussing World War II military casualties in a given region, a touching photo of a local remembrance ceremony or a family gathering at a memorial statue can help make the facts more real.


• A presentation on the need for arts funding in local school districts is more memorable when accompanied by an image of area children participating in a school musical, art exhibition, or district choral competition.
• Delivering a talk on the health effects of smoking makes more of an impact when combined with photographs of the damaged and diseased lungs that result from years of nicotine use.

By making a compelling visual statement in conjunction with your data, your information appeals to both sides of the brain—the emotional right and the logical left--making it far more likely to stay with your audience long after they’ve left the conference room and gone back to their offices.