How to Use Visual Aids Effectively


Visual aids can be a great tool for enhancing your presentation. They can increase the audience’s understanding of your topic, reinforce and explain points, and make more of an impact than spoken word alone. When you engage both the eyes and ears of your audience members, you help to improve their understanding and build retention. When used effectively, visual aids can create a more engaging and powerful experience for listeners. 

What are Visual Aids?

Visual aids consist of any items that are used in a visual manner including graphs, charts, photographs, video clips, or slideshows. They can be useful for a number of reasons:

  • Summarizing information
  • Reducing the amount of spoken words
  • Clarification and examples
  • Emphasize your points
  • To make something easier to understand
  • To create more of an impact
  • To make your message more memorable

Tips for Using Visual Aids

1. Plan your presentation before choosing visual aids.

Know the purpose and objectives of your presentation. What do you want your audience to learn from your presentation? Then, figure out what visual aids you might need to help support those objectives and reach your main goal. 

2. Choose visual aids that are relevant.

Ensure that the visual aids you choose are relevant to your topic. You don’t want to overload your audience with information and visuals that are not necessary, as this can lead to confusion. 

3. Consider your audience.

Just as you want to tailor your message to meet the needs of your specific audience, the same is true for your visuals. For example, it might not be effective to use a lot of charts and graphs if the purpose of your presentation is to entertain the audience. If the visuals don’t align with the rest of your presentation, it’s best to leave them out.

4. Your visuals should be clear and concise. 

Visual aids must always be clear, concise, and of high quality. They should be visible and easy to read from all areas in the room. You also want to keep the style consistent, such as using the same font, color scheme, backgrounds, etc. Finally, you want to avoid too much text. Your audience should not be trying to read slides while you are speaking.  

5. One message per visual

In order for your visuals to be effective, you want to make sure there is only one message per visual aid. If you are using slides for example, you should have no more than one key point per slide.

6. Vary your visuals.

If you are going to incorporate visuals, try to vary the types of visuals in your presentation. For example, don’t use only graphs or too many photographs. Using the same visuals over and over becomes redundant and boring and it defeats the purpose of using visuals at all. 

7. Don’t hide behind your visuals. 

Your visuals are simply there to support what you are saying. Remember that you are still the presenter! You are not there to simply read a slideshow to the audience. Rather, your visuals are there to support and clarify your main talking points.