Highlight to create focus
Highlighting key information in presentation visuals are important as it guides the audience to focus on a specific area or content during your presentation delivery. This eliminates the need for your audience to search for information that is buried among the sea of other information that you might have included in your presentation.
Information to highlight can be an image, words, a sentence, part of a chart or part of a diagram. This also helps you, the presenter, to immediately identify key information during your presentation delivery and allows you to get straight to the point.
Identify which information is key then apply one of these highlighting methods.
Let's take a look at some examples below.
Before: At times you might need to extract a lengthy paragraph or two from a policy or legal document to display on your presentation slide. You can't summarise or reword it because doing so might alter the meaning.
After: An effective method to bring your audience to key information embedded in paragraphs of text is to use a highlighter effect on the key information. This can be achieved easily using the highlighter tool on PowerPoint or just draw a coloured rectangle box behind the key information.
Before. Key point from a presentation is displayed on this visual. Within it there are also keywords that are not seen easily.
After. Using colors is another method to highlight keywords within the key point.
Before. A colourful chart can be interesting but is be difficult to read. There is no focus point to bring the audience attention to.
After. Using only one or two colours is better in this situation to convey the message. Immediately your eyes will be guided to the purple colour area of the chart where the key information is located in this visual.
Before. This slide shows images of various serving techniques in tennis. The images are position neatly on the slide and is a good overview slide. If the presentation is going to elaborate on each individual image then we need to ensure that the image in question is highlighted.
After. In this example, we use sizing to create the highlight for the selected image. Enlarge the image in question. At the same time we reduce the contrast of the other images in the background so that they are less visible. This is achievable in PowerPoint by reducing the transparency level of these background images.
Always remember that it is important to help your audience focus on the key message show in your presentation visuals. This ensures that your audience will always be engaged during your presentation.
The author, ANG Tian Teck is a coach, trainer, and speaker, specialising in inspiring organisations and business leaders to deliver high impact presentations. He has coached, trained, and infected over 10,000 individuals across the region with his Amazing Sticky Presentations approach. Tian Teck is also the author of two books, Sticky Presentations, and Spinning I.D.E.A.S.
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