Which of these do you do when your desk is a mess and you can’t deal with everything on it anymore? Freeze? Leave? I bet you ultimately re-arrange things into more manageable piles. Why? Because your brain becomes frazzled and momentarily short circuits. It cannot absorb so many seemingly equally important stimuli demanding your attention, so it re-groups to where it can manage what it sees. That same short circuiting happens when you present overloaded visuals in a presentation. You short-circuit your listener’s brain and your listener tunes out. To avoid that short-circuiting, keep these five points in mind when creating presentation visuals.
Less is more. Do not show more than one point per slide
Actual visuals trump text. The brain processes visuals 60,000 times faster than words. Use images, graphs or charts more than words.
Big is better. Big images & readable fonts hold attention.
Color attracts. Use color to direct listener’s eye, for interest &/or