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Visual communication – how to create and use charts for successful executive presentations

Say It With Charts: The Executive's Guide to Visual Communication

Gene Zelazny

Look to this comprehensive presentation encyclopedia for information on: how to prepare different types of charts - pie, bar, column, line, or dot - and when to use each; hands-on recommendations on lettering size, color choice, appropriate chart types, and more; and, techniques for producing dramatic e-Visuals using animation, scanned images, sound, video, and links to pertinent websites.

'Say It With Charts, 4th Edition", shows you how to put your message in visual form and translate information and ideas into persuasive, powerful charts, visuals, and multimedia presentations - holding your audience's attention as you communicate exactly what you want, with no confusion.

http://bit.ly/UUyGxS
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Audio Visual Presentations

Even the best messages can be ruined by a bad presentation. To get your information across effectively and to generate the right response from your audience, you need to know how to use audiovisual technology to your advantage.

Interested in how to improve your presentation? Read on for some audiovisual presentation dos and don’ts. => http://bit.ly/x1XXQu

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Tell Powerful Stories with Pictures: A National Geographic Photographer Shares Tips for Speakers (WEBINAR)

with Dick Durrance

A speech or presentation is in part a visual experience for the audience. Some speakers avoid using A/V equipment, but many others find that adding a visual component helps their audience focus and learn.
It’s common advice today, for those who use media like PowerPoint or slides, that visuals should be *visual*—use more images on screen and fewer words.
But how do you select—or create—the best images? If you want to use photos, come learn from Dick Durrance, one of the world’s top photographers who now uses that background to add impact as a professional speaker.
Dick will show us what to look for in a picture—and how to take our own—to add power and depth to our message.

To illustrate his points, Dick will use more than 75 pictures created for National Geographic assignments, global advertising campaigns, the world’s great golf courses, and the national parks. He’ll show you how to better create or select photographs for your use.

The old adage is true: the right image instantly communicates much more than 1000 words. As a wordsmith, you carefully choose the right word to express your thoughts. In the same way, you want the images you use in your presentations, blogs, websites, ezines and other materials to perfectly complement your words.
The photos need to be *great* to accompany your stories and points—not just snapshots. You want images that enthrall your audience. Pictures you take yourself can be exactly what helps express your unique point or story, if they are done well.
However, you’re not a professional photographer. You need simple techniques to take excellent photos, without lugging around a heavy, expensive camera, full-sized tripod, and other burdensome equipment. You need to know how to take a great picture that doesn’t involve endless messing with F-stops and other technical issues. Fortunately, today’s digital cameras now take care of what used to be technical challenges.
Dick Durrance, professional speaker and former National Geographic staff photographer, will show you how to harness the power of the graphic elements in your pictures—light, line, shape, color, and texture—to better tell the story you are trying to share with your audiences without having to rely on sophisticated technical skills.

Hall of Fame speaker Ian Percy once wrote, “When your life flashes before your eyes, it’s pictures not words that flash by. Our life stories are always told in pictures.”
In this webinar, you will learn how to:
• Be clear in your mind on the story you’re trying to tell in the picture. You will see how to frame, crop, and use the basic graphic elements in the picture to lead the viewer’s eye to the most important point you are trying to make with the picture.
• Select the light (sunrise, bright midday, foggy, dusk, shadows) you need to set the tone for your picture
• Use color to evoke emotion and texture to add depth to a picture
• Shift the angle or perspective to create a much more dramatic and intriguing image
• Compose pictures that contain all of the elements that are essential to your story
• Be aware of what shapes draw one’s eye into the image

More information => http://bit.ly/j9Xa5R

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Tip: You and your visuals

Using visuals of any sort in a presentation has to be as unobtrusive as possible.

The first step here is being prepared.

If you can practice beforehand, do so.

Organise physical objects so that you can reach them when they are needed, without having to search, and without having to fumble. This may mean arranging them in the order in which they will be presented. It may mean practising the presentation so that you know automatically where to reach for something. This can apply to objects you want to display, the remote control for projecting equipment, the pens for flip charts or overhead projectors or a whiteboard, or to slides or overhead transparencies.

During these practice sessions, work out how you will move around the visual supports and equipment. Where will you place the objects you want to pick up – on a table, or another piece of furniture? Where will this, or the equipment, be so that you can move around it and communicate most easily with your audience – in front of you, beside or behind you? Always consider the least distracting way of accessing your material and the greatest ease of movement.

If you are using projection equipment, visualise its placement. Think about how you will work with the laptop or the overhead projector – standing beside, or behind? Do you want your silhouette projected on the screen as well as your visuals? Walking in front of the screen will also obscure them.

If you cannot organise the positioning of your equipment, then try to become familiar with it before the presentation and then visualise how you will use it best.

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How to include pictures in presentations

I've just discovered this article at Microsoft Office. What a treasure trove they have there.

This one, by Robert Lane and Andre Vlcek is called Speaking Visually: Eight Roles Pictures Play in Presentation.

Including pictures in presentations is a simple and powerful way of expanding your expressive potential as a speaker. Pictures communicate at levels beyond the descriptive possibilities of words and bathe the brain in much desired visual stimulation. At the same time, not all pictures are created equally. Choosing the right images, and using them in the right ways, can greatly impact your effectiveness.

... and there are some powerful examples.  This one under the heading "Getting Attention".

Eight Roles Pictures Play in Presentation

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Let Me Illustrate My Point:Illuminating Your Presentations with Simple Drawings

Even if you’re severely artistically challenged, you can add content and excitement to your presentations by creating wonderful, memorable cartoons in real time. Anyone can do it and Mike will show you how.

Why create your own cartoons instead of using clip art? Because you can make them appear as your audience watches. You can customize them specifically to your audience’s industry or application and you can draw them in response to audience input and feedback. You will stand out as not showing overused “bean” people or other clip art some audiences consider hokey. The result: an audience that is engaged, informed and entertained.

Mike will walk you through some simple images and have you draw along with him real-time. He’ll show you easy-to-draw people (not stick figures) and how to adjust their facial expressions to match the emotion you want to convey. You’ll draw as he demonstrates so you walk away with new tools to integrate your drawings into keynotes, trainings, facilitations, and even webinars.

In this webinar you’ll learn how to:

  • visually represent concepts such as leadership, cutomer-centric, diversity, and empowerment
  • integrate industry jargon, keywords, and cliches to make your points visually
  • use visual humor to surprise and delight your audiences
  • apply these cartoons to sales, marketing, production, HR, customer service, finance
  • enhance your audience’s problem-solving skills by helping them change perspective — literally!
  • draw simple cartoons to help people/groups communicate better with each other
  • utilize these techniques to break down rigid thinking and bad assumptions
  • access a $100 tool for you to draw on your PowerPoint slides

Special note: To view this webinar, you’ll need to be in front of an Internet-connected computer. You don’t need anything else but a pad and pencil to draw along with Mike.

More information?  Click here

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Give your audience something to flip over

Give Participants Something to Flip Over

Let me start off by saying that I do NOT like toys or other distractions in training. I’m NOT one to provide little widgets to keep participants’ hands occupied or provide cutesy pens or such trinkets. I’ve always viewed them as distractions that shouldn’t be necessary if your training is engaging and relevant. I recently “discovered” a technique that simultaneously:

  • Provides motivational, upbeat phrases for participants
  • Reinforces key concepts
  • Ensures that everyone is paying attention and following along
  • Allows the instructor to tell whether each participant grasps the concept

http://bit.ly/9qWIw5

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Unforgettable Presentations: Using Prezi to Create Stand-Out Speeches

with Angelie Agarwal

At conferences, conventions and management/sales meetings, speaker after speaker shows PowerPoint or Keynote slides to illustrate their points. No matter how beautiful the backgrounds or images, they are pretty much same old/same old. Even the professional speakers’ visuals don’t stand out that much from the rest.

But there’s a new presentation tool in town and it’s blowing away the tried-and-true old slides. In fact, it’s a favorite tool of TED presenters who have entranced their audiences.

What is it? It’s Prezi — a new tool for creating presentation visuals that can lead you to a whole new way of thinking about your talks. It can help create better narratives and more persuasive presentations — what every professional presenter craves.

Angelie Agarwal, chief evangelist for Prezi, will show us how to integrate this new tool into our presentations to stand out among the other speakers on the program — or our competition. This special webinar will discuss how professional speakers, trainers and consultants can use this tool to create truly unforgettable presentations.

You’ll learn:
• how Prezi is very different from digital slide programs
• how you can use this tool to cement your uniqueness
• how Prezi helps you become a more persuasive presenter
• how to get started with the basics
• tips and tricks for advanced speakers on presenting in Prezi

Get more information here ...

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What not to do with your PowerPoint

the team at m62 make some good points ...

Presenters are beginning to realise that their presentations don’t have to be boring, and it is inspiring to see that people are moving away from bullet points to more engaging visuals. Audiences are now demanding more, and presenters are rising to meet this.

Unfortunately however, a large number of presenters feel that the small improvements they have made to their slides are sufficient, failing to realise that there is so much more that can be done with them. And so we see the same mistakes made time and time again – without the presenters realising that they’re doing wrong.

and the article goes on to list 7 major mistakes made in powerpoint presentations and how to avoid them.

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What now … Death by Flickr Musak?

This great post from Olivia Mitchell

Are your slides ‘Visual Musak’?

I saw very few bullet-point presentations at the SXSW conference. Yay! But I did see a disturbing trend – the overuse of flickr photos and other interesting images. These photos sometimes feature stunning photography, they’re quirky and interesting. The problem is ...

.... http://bit.ly/beAIHa