Visuals are often an integral part of a presentation, carrying a lot of the message the speaker wants to convey. So think of your visuals not as add-ons but as a major means of getting your points across. Many speakers use slides created in presentation software to help keep themselves on track and to guide the audience. In addition, posters, flip charts, chalkboards, or interactive whiteboards can also help you make strong visual statements.

Presentation software such as PowerPoint or Prezi allows you to prepare slides you want to display and even to enhance the images with sound. PowerPoint presentations move in a linear fashion from beginning to end, while Prezi software allows presenters to move in more circular paths (and to show the circling in the slides). To choose software for a presentation, consider what the software allows you to do and how much time you will need to learn to use it effectively. Before you begin designing your presentation, make sure that the equipment you need will be available, and keep simple design principles in mind (16b).

Shuqiao Song’s slides

For her presentation, “Residents of a DysFUNctional HOME: Text and Image,” Shuqiao Song developed a series of very simple slides aimed at underscoring her points and keeping her audience focused on them. She began by introducing the work, showing the book cover on an otherwise black slide. Throughout the presentation, she used very simple visuals—a word or two, or a large image from the book she was discussing—to keep her audience focused on what she was saying.