Chapter 13: Visual Aids. For use with the
Public Speaking Project's, Public Speaking:
The Virtual Text.
Please note that this tutorial will not
cover all of the material found within
the chapter, and there may be one or two
items covered in this tutorial that
might not be found within the book.
Be sure to choose your visual aids
carefully. You want to use visuals that
really help to explain something
important about your topic to your
audience. Good visual aids can help the
audience remember that important
information for a much longer period of
time than they would if they did not
have the visual aids to look at.
There are different type[s] of visual aids
that can be incorporated into your
speech or presentation. One of them is
your attire, how you dress, or your
physical appearance...how you appear to
the audience. Another type of
visual aid is a 3-D object or
objects that you might bring into the
the venue where you're speaking,
such as perhaps a musical instrument or
other type of object, or other types of
props that you might use. Also, you could
potentially use flip charts or posters.
You might also use handouts that you
pass out before your speech for the
audience to refer to during your
speech. You can also use electronic slideware such as Microsoft PowerPoint or
Google slides, or you can also use a  relatively newer program called
Prezi.
Some principles of design to keep in
mind as you put your visual aids
together, try to make sure that the
visual aid is audience focused, focused
on the needs and wants of the audience.
Try not to incorporate too much or too
little information into any single
visual aid. If you're using electronic
slideware such as PowerPoint, try not
to put too much information on one slide.
You can always... take that
information and spread it out over two
or more slides if you need to.
And try to focus on just one concept per
slide. If you have two or three concepts
you'de like to cover put those on two or
three separate slides, or use two or
three separate visual aids to
differentiate them from each other.
In terms of slide layout, be sure to
leave enough white space or empty space
in your slides, or on your slides so the
information doesn't become too crowded.
Also, be sure to use a consistent color
scheme. In other words, use the same
color scheme for all of the slides in
your PowerPoint file, or your Google
slides file, or whatever type of slideware program you may be using. Be
sure to use either dark text on a light
background or light text on a dark
background because if you use light text
in a light background or dark text and a
dark background, it's more difficult to
read. And of course try to use a font
that's easy to read.
This image shows a pie chart. Pie charts
are good at expressing information in
terms of fractions of a whole. In other
words, if you have one hundred percent of
something broken into separate, smaller
categories, pie charts are good at
expressing or displaying that type of
information.
On this slide we see an image of a
line graph. This line graph is showing
information chronologically. When you see
similar graphs, such as how the stock
market is doing over the course of a
period of time, that [information is] usually
represented in a line graph. And usually
line graphs present information [covered] over a
period of time.
Here we see a bar chart illustrating
quantities of a certain item...
over time. There are two different bars,
each with a different color. You can
compare [&] contrast the quantities of them
over time, as you look at each month,
found at the bottom, or in the x axis of
the bar chart.
For more information on visual aids,
please visit the Public Speaking
Project's tutorials entitled, An
Introduction to Visual Aids,  and Using
Visual Aids at www.publicspeakingproject.org/videomodules.html.
The Public Speaking Project's textbook,
Public Speaking: The Virtual Text, can be
found at www.publicspeakingproject.org.
