Holding an audience’s attention has always been difficult. While it may once have been as simple as “Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears,” today’s audiences need a little more razzle to stay engaged and follow your message from the beginning of your presentation to its very end. In this post, we’re highlighting two unique visual presentation ideas that will help drive audience engagement and retention.
A World (of Distractions) in Your Pocket
Everybody these days has always-on, instant access to movies, music, social media, games, news, messaging, and other stuff that might divert their attention from, well, everything else. Our smartphones, tablets, desktop PCs, and refrigerators are connected to an internet full of screaming goats, singing cats, the changes detected in your credit rating, and some folks who want to speak to you about your car’s extended warranty.
While some of that stuff sounds fun (woohoo, credit check!), it’s capable of intercepting someone’s attention and pulling them away from whatever else they should be paying attention to—for instance, your presentation slides. It’s not enough to grab someone’s attention, you have to hang on to it long enough to get them connected to what you’re saying, and that’s the tricky part.
If your message alone isn’t as captivating as all the rest of that stuff (and how could it be?), you’ll need some backup. People will invariably drift back to their personal screens and away from your content before your key points have a chance to change their lives.
Meetings, As Far As the Eye Can See
Virtual meetings were a welcome—and necessary—addition to our routine in the past couple of years. Speaking of routine, that’s what they have now become: boring, bland, blah. Bad.
Thankfully, things are returning somewhat to normal, but virtual meetings aren’t going anywhere. Like a persistent kid brother, they’re tagging along as the regular old face-to-face meetings make a comeback.
So now we have two flavors of meetings, and even cool ranch loses its novelty over time. Your average audience member, whether in the room with you or across the internet, must take in more information in less time.
It used to be you could deliver your message with no more charm than a black and white PowerPoint presentation, and people would (begrudgingly) pay enough attention to ensure the critical information would get across. But times have changed, and even our old familiar face-to-face meetings need creative presentation ideas to connect.
Hold On to Your Overhead Projectors
It will take much more than an expanded color palette and a cheeky background image to draw people in. No matter how awesome your slide deck may be, you’ll need creative visual presentation ideas if you want your audience to remember anything you put in front of them (unless you know where to get those mini cupcakes with the hologram icing, those things are dope).
You can still pull off a great presentation if you rely on the right type of visual aid. There are as many presentation designs as there are types of presentations, but if you want to make an impression, you’ll go for the eyes. The information shared visually with an audience is absorbed faster and retained longer, and because of this, it resonates more than information shared in any other way.
Visual presentation ideas used to be no more complex than flip charts and handouts printed on lime, salmon, and goldenrod paper. That’s all changed—we’re adapting to our new tools, and the bright, bold, colorful methods we’ve been seeing in virtual meetings are now making their way into meeting rooms (both digital and acoustic) all over.
Visual Tools for More Engaging Presentations
Visual presentation ideas need not be limited to public domain presentation templates or variations of the standard, laptop-driven podium fodder we’ve all seen elsewhere. Using the right approach may depend on your content, goals, or audience, but graphic recording and video animation are as flexible, agile, and adaptable as your (brilliant and captivating!) imagination. They provide a great way to engage with an audience and keep them connected to your message.
Graphic Recording for In-Person or Virtual Events
Whether you call it graphic recording, visual note-taking, live sketching, or any other variation on a theme, adding this creative and fun element to your event will help your audience get both the big ideas and the critical details in bright, bold, living color.
A specially trained artist from The Sketch Effect will work with you before, during, and after your presentation to create a series of ever-evolving illustrations that accompany and emphasize your messaging. These sketches can be physical (for in-person events) or digital (for virtual events) but will illuminate your presentation’s central themes with hand-drawn words and images relating directly to these concepts.
This brings all the benefits of communicating visually and taking one of the biggest challenges of public speaking: doing it solo. A single presenter facing an audience can feel a lot like a cigarette, and a blindfold should have been provided ahead of time, but don’t be afraid of sudden flashes and loud noises. A graphic recording artist from The Sketch Effect can draw the crosshairs away from you and over to the stuff you want them to focus on: your message.
Whether your use cases involve internal communications between or amongst teams, training for new staff, new software, new procedures, or even outward-facing presentations to external partners, graphic recording gives you a way to entertain. At the same time, you inform, captivating your audience and immersing them in your message.
Video Animation
Whether you opt for slick, streamlined, oh-so-stylish motion graphics animation, 2D animation, or a whiteboard or explainer animation, this can be a potent force multiplier. Combining your presentation’s key facts and figures with all the movement and color available to you via video animation empowers you to connect your audience to your message in a uniquely engaging way.
Video animation is incredibly adaptable and can be used to great effect to communicate even complex or highly technical information. Whether your charts are organizational or flow, video animation services can help your audience receive, process, and retain information faster and more completely than traditional methods.
Make Your Presentation a Visual Masterpiece With The Sketch Effect
We’d love to make your next presentation your best one yet, and it’s as easy as saying, “Hey guys! I need some visual aid ideas for presentations!” Our team will work with you to understand your message, mission, and objectives and create a unique approach to enhance and refine your communication.
With visual elements updating and changing in real-time, your presentation draws them in, keeps them watching, and sends them home informed and inspired. Schedule a consultation to discuss your event needs today—we’re all in.
Need a great visual but not planning an event? Our summary board sketches offer a creative a solution similar to graphic recording with time and cost-saving benefits. Interested in video animation but need a faster solution? Our timelapse animation voiceovers offer the same benefits as animated videos without intensive production.
