What Role Do Visual Elements Play in Storytelling?

We remember 30% of what we read, and 80% of what we see.

A presentation cannot consist of just talking — visuals are key. However, the visuals cannot just be a script of the words you’re saying — that adds no value and does not engage an audience. You need to enhance what you’re saying and increase the audience’s ability to fully understand your ideas with well-chosen, relevant visuals.

Visuals need to live in harmony with the content of your presentation or story — not overpower it.

When communicating complex data, such as a risk analysis or a sales forecast for example, it’s all too easy to just throw a graph, chart or list of numbers up on the screen, talk over the top of them and expect your audience to do the work of joining the dots for you. Again — that’s boring.

What’s needed is to bring relevant, ideally interactive, visuals that are as much a part of the presentation as they are the story.

Visuals Communicate

Visuals instantly emphasise and help to communicate your point in a more powerful and accessible way.

Imagine you’re trying to communicate the relationship between two or more areas of a business. Perhaps how the impact of a project running behind schedule will affect the budget of another project and slow down the progression of an entirely different project again. Being able to display this visually, maybe with an infographic will only help to clarify what you are presenting — and that is just with a static image.

Better yet would be an interactive visual — one that displays the high level information of the three projects at first, then allow you to drill down further and explore the complexities of the relationships, but immediately let you return to where you are and continue your presentation.

No longer would you be constricted to the traditional linear method of storytelling.

Visuals Keep Things Moving

Well-placed and thoroughly researched visuals that naturally reflect the agenda of your presentation, help to keep the story moving. You can think of them as chapter headings, different scenes or even as plot points.

We’re taught from a young age that stories need a beginning, a middle and an end. The same basics apply to presentations — choose your visuals carefully and your audience will remain engaged and focus throughout the journey you have planned for them.

Visuals Engage

To put it simply, having something to look at break a presentation up for an audience and stimulates a different part of their brain.

People can quickly become overloaded with blocks and blocks of spoken information. Using visuals to break up large sections of speech, will help to keep an audience engaged — especially when used to simplify — or amplify — the content’s message.

Visuals Add Authenticity

Having an image to reiterate, confirm, or even prove, what you are saying is a very powerful aspect of storytelling and presenting.

Perhaps you’re trying to sell a product or service to a potential customer or introduce a new business plan to board members. Displaying evidence of past customer successes — a direct quote from a current customer –or how a particular business thrived after adapting a new a way of working — increased sales figures — as proof is invaluable.

Authenticity is priceless and the visuals can be created at no cost.

Visuals are a very simple and effective way to enhance your business storytelling.

Originally published at blog.sharpcloud.com.