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

Many Formats, One Root

You can use many different formats to present a visual story. We discussed these in Chapter 13 on delivery planning, and you've already identified at least one format you need to create for your story.

No matter which formats you're going to create to present your story, and you may have many, START BY CREATING A ONE-PAGE VISUAL STORY AS A RICH PICTURE, combining images and text in a concise presentation. Consider this your resource or tree that has all the fruit you'll need to pick at various times. The table on the right presents a summary of the format types and explains how each is related to the one-page visual story format.

Each format has a different balance between the spoken, written, and visual content. You may also vary the balance of data to emotional content, or abstract your ideas to simple single themes to fit the different audiences that will receive each format. Your choice of formats may impact your ability to deliver the story, or you can have it read or delivered by another person. For example, a poster or an infographic can go viral through social media, whereas a presentation needs someone to deliver it.

Design the one-page visual story well, and the rest will follow. The compositions, content coding, and wording from the one-page visual story can provide consistency across all the formats you choose to create. In the City University Hospital example at the end of this chapter we show the decisions Tom made when selecting the formats ...