An infographic, a pictorial way of demonstrating a wealth of information, can help to demonstrate your point clearly instead of the deathly dull option of points on a slide (of course, the best thing would be a practical demonstration, but there’s a limit to some presenters ability to tread the boards with enough pazzaz).
If you think style could make your, your colleagues or your client’s presentations far more interesting, then read on. Your audiences, with their diminishing attention spans, love these pretty pictures full of small, relevant, clearly-displayed nuggets of information. They’re straight to the point, usually factually interesting and often drive home what those statistics really mean.
The great news is there is a wealth of help freely available which can turn even the most unskilled computer user into a professional.
Here are a few for you to get started. Stat Planet allows you to create some amazing interactive visuals, which you can then use as they are or to create a static image. You can get access to some great world data to use in your images.
Then there’s Hohli, an intuitive, simple online chart maker. It lets you produce easy-to-make diagrams and flow charts, while Many Eyes lets you upload your own data or use data already stored on the site. Wordle lets you create word visuals using text you enter, and is a popular Facebook app.
You may notice that a quirky name is an essential for launching this kind of project, usually removing anything cumbersome, like a vowel. But names you will know include the New York Times (NYT), whose visual lab lets subscribers use statistics from recent NYT articles to create visuals in various formats. And, of course, good old Google, with its Public Data service which lets you transform a wealth of information on demographics into beautiful images.
And if you paid attention last month, when I shared with you the wonders of the Prezi presentation software, you have all the elements to go wild.
Now, you’ll need to go on a search for these websites (I’m not doing everything for you) and decide which one works for you. You’ll also find a few other services, but some are limited to working only with Windows, or Mac.
That should get you started.
Now there’s no excuse for not creating brilliant presentations in which even the dullest data can sing.
– Richard John is an events industry trainer and consultant. He can be contacted through the Editor. Any comments? Email conferencenews@mashmedia.net
