Balancing Your Visuals

Nearly every Washington Post article is a work of art, and the one I had just finished was no exception. Yet somehow I was left feeling that something was amiss. While the story itself was excellent, as I stood back for the long view I realized the problem: the visuals.

It’s not that the visuals were poor or lacking. In fact, just the opposite– the visuals were so very good that they told the entire story in a glance. The words were redundant.

I’m sure you’ve sat through presentations where the PowerPoint was done so well that the speaker should have simply played piano as in the old “silent” theatres. And surely you’ve experienced the opposite, where the speaker was truly riveting and the PowerPoint served only to distract. Occasionally they’re both great, but I’m willing to bet that you’ve sat through far more bad PowerPoints than good ones.

You see, our various senses inform our brains in very different ways. For example, our sense of smell and our sense of touch impact our emotions more than they impact our intellect. My dogs get an enormous amount of information through their sense of smell, while humans tend to receive intellectual information primarily through our eyes and our ears. But even visual and aural cues are accepted by the human brain in different ways.

The act of reading from a page, or listening to a speaker, tends to feed into the mind in a linear, additive fashion. Pack it first, sort it later. The longer the speech or the writing, the more this is true. Graphics, on the other hand, tend to be processed holistically and analytically immediately upon presentation. When presented with a visual, we (usually) get the “big picture” immediately, then we begin to winkle out the details. Most of us take graphics as challenges, puzzles to be solved, and it is this active participation which burns graphics into the memory and makes them such powerful teaching tools.

So here’s the issue when you combine words with graphics in your presentation: how do you ensure one does not distract from the other? Or better still, how do you use each to complement the other? (Or compliment the other– either sense is good!)

At the outset, you need to consider the importance and power of your graphics, if any, and weigh them against your text. Are they so powerful that they can essentially stand on their own, with just a little linguistic guidance, or do they stand only to support your words, which continue to carry the main burden? Frequently, in fact, the graphics serve as little more than decoration.

Where they are used in tandem, words and graphics should work together like two singers, one carrying the tune, one harmonizing to enrich the melody. PowerPoint, properly used, should create “Aha!!!” moments when the listener suddenly takes all that you’ve been saying and wraps it up with his or her own ribbon. Flip charts and whiteboards, properly used, act as a kind of rear-view mirror helping the listener recall the journey thus far.

Visuals can be powerful, but if you use them, use them well.

Bonus tip: What You Should Never Do With PowerPoint (and a picture of my dogs…) (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/balancing-your-visuals-norman-bowley/)

See missed Briefings! (https://us12.campaign-archive.com/home/?u=c5b0c09025ad045bf11bb02f5&id=b5efdf9247)