During a PowerPoint presentation, viewers usually have to process a lot of information in a short time. There is a quick risk that important aspects and messages are not captured correctly. With the help of a flipchart you can outline even complicated facts in an understandable way. In this blog article, I’ll tell you why and when it pays to use a flip chart during your own presentation.
What speaks for the flipchart
A PowerPoint presentation can already be exhausting. The speaker gives his lecture, at the same time he shows his slides, which are usually provided with a larger amount of information. Viewers have to concentrate hard to take in and properly process all the information that is pouring at them at the same time. Most of the time, not all information is stored as the speaker would like. It is really annoying when the most important theses are either not retained by your audience at all or only incorrectly. In the worst case, the most important information of the whole lecture is not understood. The risk becomes even greater when your presentation deals with really complex issues.
If you want to play it safe, the solution might be to slow down your presentation a bit to convey complicated information in a simplified way. A flipchart is very suitable for this purpose. Here you can use simple sketches to make details of your argument clearer. If you use additional media besides your slide set, the media mix will also add some excitement to your presentation. Going to the flipchart is a change of pace for your audience and an opportunity for you to move around the stage and focus attention on a specific topic.
How to use the flipchart effectively
If you now object that you can’t draw that well, I can reassure you. It’s not so much how perfect you are, but how well you explain your sketch and the information it contains. In most cases, simple geometric shapes such as circles, squares and triangles, a stick figure or a smiley face will suffice. Have the courage to say what you want your paintings to represent. If you paint cars like a three-year-old, there’s nothing wrong with that, as long as the audience knows it’s supposed to be a car. If you want to draw a dog and it looks more like a donkey, take it with humor and comment on the drawing result accordingly. Your audience will gratefully receive this livening up with a joke about your painting skills. You still have the attention.
Often drawings are not necessary. Sometimes it is enough to write down important keywords and explain them individually. During your preparation, think about which points of your presentation are particularly important or even particularly complicated. Ask yourself in what way the information can be presented to make the content clearer. Tips for better flip chart design are also available free of charge in abundance on the Internet. On Youtube, for example, you can find a course in 14 parts where you can learn important ideas for creating your own sketches.
Finally, a little tip: make sure you have good pens available. When you book a flipchart for an event, there are often no pens available or only used ones. To be on the safe side, you should always bring a set of fresh pens yourself.
Dipl.-Wirtsch.-Informatiker Matthias Garten as the expert for multimedia presentations and professional PowerPoint presentations knows about the art of professional slide design. He is an entrepreneur, speaker (TOP 100 Speaker), trainer (TOP 100 Excellence Trainer), multiple book author, presentation coach (presentation training), member of the GSA and Club 55, organizer of the Presentation Conference, Presentation Bootcamp and Presentation Rocket Day. In addition to PowerPoint and presentation training, he inspires and advises companies to present themselves even more effectively and thus stand out from competitors. He is the business owner of the presentation and PowerPoint agency smavicon Best Business Presentations and with his team has created over 15,000 professional PowerPoint presentations for over 150 industries since 1993.
