Stories that Move Mountains: Storytelling and Visual Design for Persuasive Presentations

Intentional Design

It's now time to start using the content to build the visual story. As the arrows in the Visual Story Map image indicate, everything you've been through so far leads to the design process. In this chapter, we show you how to create visual elements and combine them in compelling ways so that they can be viewed and understood in a variety of formats. In previous chapters, we asked you to apply laser-focus on the critical elements; that will not change now. In this chapter, we want you to understand that every line, color, and word should be chosen with equal care, and nothing should be put into the visual or written content that doesn't directly and intentionally contribute to the understanding of the story.

A two-hour movie without many special effects will today consume a budget of tens of millions of dollars. The lowest-cost reality TV show, with no expensive actors or scriptwriters will cost fifty thousand dollars per episode. They keep the attention of the audience for an hour or two, but the price is high. Most business presentations have a fairly minimal budget, yet have the same challenge. So what are you going to do to keep the audience's attention for the typical 30- or 60-minute presentation?

We have mentioned Steve Jobs a number of times. He became a master of the art of presentation, using heroes and villains, great visuals, and strong narrative. Science has proven what the great presenters like Steve Jobs know intuitively, that people get bored ...