Organizing Your Visual Aids

Just as your organizational pattern assists you and your audience in following your argument, visual aids provide clarity and visual support for your main points.

Visual aids can enhance your credibility, clarify your points, make your talk more interesting, and assist an audience in comprehension and retention.

Visual aids can also detract from your credibility, muddle your points, distract your audience from your main points, and cause your audience to pay more attention to your skills with graphic design than to your ability to inform or to persuade.

Types of visuals
Charts and graphs are useful for showing how numbers relate. Check the weather, stock and/or baseball page of a major newspaper to see how large amounts of information can be charted with color and space.

Videos and tapes add movement to your talk. Use short clips and be sure to cue up your tape/DVD ahead of time. Because every video player is different, rehease play before your talk. Consider how you will dim the lights if needed.

Objects and models can be useful as well as long as everyone in the audience can see your prop. It is almost always a bad idea to pass an object around the room while you are talking.

You are, of course a visual aid. Other people can be useful as well to demonstrate how to do something. Be sure to work with your volunteer ahead of time to ensure that your partner does not upstage you! Coaches use volunteers often to demonstrate how to perform; watch how they do this well.

Click here to learn more about using computer-generated graphics presentations like Power Point.

Edward Tufte, a master of information graphics, transforms a chart from a list of statistics to a useful visual display showing intriguing relationships. Go to http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/index and click on “E.T. Writings.” The site offers tips that are particularly useful for handouts and posters, even at the upper levels of government and management. For example, from the menu at right click on the article “Power Point Does Rocket Science” to learn about NASA’s heavy use of this graphics tool for its investigations and presentations. Communication expert Nan Peck suggests that you make your visuals big, bold, and brief. For more, go to her public speaking website at http://www.nvcc.edu/home/npeck/. Or go to her homepage to get an overview of her resources at http://www.nvcc.edu/home/npeck/spd100/default.htm, then click on “Using Visual Aids.” Want to see an amazing visual aid? Check out Michael W. Davidson and the Florida State University's Graphics & Web Programming Team website, "Secret Worlds: The Universe Within." Check it out at http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu. Start by clicking on Photo Gallery, Microscopic Primer, or Digital Imaging for a universe of visual ideas.