Designing Presentation Aids

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Whether you create your presentation aids by hand or generate them using software, certain principles of rhetorical communication and graphic design apply. Keep in mind that the purpose of a presentation aid is to support your ideas, not to repeat verbatim what you are saying in your speech. Any presentation aid, even those that are expertly designed, can hurt your effectiveness as a speaker if the audience’s attention is drawn more to the aids than to the message itself.1 Thus you should focus on creating aids that will truly clarify information, taking care not to overweight the speech with slides.

CHAPTER 21