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Speaking Visually: Eight Roles Pictures Play in Presentation

Author: Robert Lane and Andre Vlcek

Date Created: April 15th 2009
Last Updated: June 14th 2012

Continued from Page 3...

Demonstrating a Process: Stringing together a series of pictures that gradually walk viewers through the steps of a process, from beginning to end, is a great approach. This kind of incremental picture progression is called a picture story.

Figure 16

Let’s say you are a moving and transportation company specializing in corporate relocation. Your services probably follow relatively predictable steps, such as selling the prospect’s existing house, locating and securing another residence, physically moving the family, exploring school options, and so forth. Each of these steps can be illustrated with appropriate pictures, perhaps even photos you or your company have produced directly, depicting real situations (as opposed to mere stock photography).

Figure 17

Process pictures usually help tell a story, one image at a time. While showing each picture, the presenter fills in extra detail verbally, as needed.

Providing Visual Cues Back to the Speaker: Finally, think about this: So far we’ve focused on pictures that are for the audience’s consumption, but pictures can aid the presenter in multiple ways as well. The small images in Figure 18 are screenshots, a special kind of ‘picture’ your computer takes of itself. A screenshot is a representation of your computer screen, what it happens to be displaying when the image is made.

Here, we have incorporated screenshots into this slide’s navigation element. The presenter can look at the navigation thumbnails and see instant visual cues for the content that will open once a link is clicked (clicking the small green and orange thumbnail in Figure 18 opens the separate linked slide show shown in Figure 19). Screenshot images on slides help a presenter stay oriented, remember upcoming content, find links, gauge timing, and much more. We as presenters benefit greatly from our own visual communication directed back at us!

Figure 19