Charts Instead of Bullets – You Want Me To Do What?

Recently, I was handed a PowerPoint presentation that contained slide after slide of bulleted text. My instructions were to “pretty it up”. You guessed it; my client was from the south. I love the regional diversity I encounter from one workday to the next. One day, I may be asked to develop an instructional presentation that speaks to an academic community and the next day I’m asked to make a bunch of slides look “pretty”. No problem; I like doing both. Well, getting back to my southern client, I thought his presentation was greatly in need of some visuals. So why not take some of that bulleted text, and replace it with a pictograph? That is, a custom chart that visually communicates the same message the bulleted text does. Only, it does it better. So instead of a presentation that’s all bullets, you have a bulleted slide, a graph, another bulleted slide, a chart, another bulleted slide, a photo with labels. You get the gist of it. Not only does it make the presentation look  “pretty” it’s a stronger communication.  And that’s the ultimate goal no matter what part of the country you’re from.