Pitch Your Ideas Better by Using the Magic of Visual Storytelling

People cobble together incoherent presentations by reusing old slides, grabbing marketing materials, or using any visually appealing content without a clear strategy or narrative structure.

• A cobbled-together, confusing presentation with stock images, unexplained graphs, and bullet points • Creates confusion for the audience with no clear message or call to action • Results in missed opportunities to influence conversations and drive action

• Time pressure - people rush and opt for quick fixes • Lack of visual strategy - missing a deliberate approach to presentation design

Viewers must work harder to understand, experience confusion, and carry the responsibility of figuring out the message themselves instead of having it presented clearly.

Visuals should function as backup dancers supporting and amplifying the story, not as the lead. The narrative must be front and center, not visual elements.

Team meetings often get derailed by discussions about colors, animations, and design details instead of focusing on building a strong narrative first, creating a mindset shift toward story-focused collaboration.

• Once you have the narrative as your core structure, visuals slot in naturally • Picking visuals becomes easier when you already know the story you want to tell • Prevents losing sight of the narrative while focusing on design elements

Don't open PowerPoint immediately. Use pen and paper, brainstorming, or voice recording to develop the story first. This ensures the narrative foundation is solid before adding any visual elements.

Visual storytelling isn't just for keynotes and formal presentations. It applies to any meeting where more than two people will view your materials, making it relevant for everyday business situations.

Many professionals self-identify as non-storytellers and opt out, thinking they're engineers, data scientists, or product managers without realizing that storytelling enhances all business communication.

Wrapping data and ideas in a story helps you become a better communicator and helps your audience understand what you want them to know and do.

The book 'Everyday Business Storytelling' by Janine Buzzard provides detailed guidance. Chapter 9 features before-and-after slide transformations showing how to visualize stories and data effectively.

• Setting provides context and grounds insights with data, doesn't need to be lengthy • Characters humanize the story, create emotional elements, and help audiences relate • Characters in business presentations can be unnamed but humanize aspects of updates, negotiations, or proposals

• Conflict is healthy tension that makes audiences lean in and understand why they should care • Resolution reveals your solution, idea, or next step • Most presentations wrongly start with resolution instead of building the 'why' first

The first three signposts (setting, characters, conflict) build the 'why' - establishing why the audience should care. Resolution is the 'how' - the details of implementation or recommendations.

• A mental bridge connects the 'why' (conflict) to the 'how' (resolution) • The big idea is the one thing the audience should remember after leaving • Should be verbal, possibly visual, grounding and anchoring the entire story • Needs reinforcement throughout to ensure it resonates with the audience

Take your last presentation and mark up each slide by labeling whether it represents setting, characters, conflict, or resolution to identify gaps and missing elements in your narrative flow.

• Missing or buried big idea - the core message isn't clear • Starting with resolution - jumping to the solution without building the case for why it matters • Incomplete narrative - lacking one or more essential story elements

Using the signpost framework creates a common language for teams collaborating on presentations, shifting conversations from visual elements to narrative structure and flow.

• Moves focus from fonts and colors to story fundamentals in early meetings • Prevents iteration cycles from becoming design-focused too early • Builds stronger narratives through collaborative storytelling

• Headings are passive and vague (Update, Review, Next Step) making audiences work harder • Headlines are longer, active, and clearly state the insight or takeaway • Headlines drive action faster and make it easy for audiences to understand the point

• Classify content into primary (critical information), secondary (supporting information), and tertiary (additional support) • Bucketizing helps determine how many visual elements you need (three buckets = three visual elements) • This step comes before choosing specific visual types

• Photos - humanize and create emotional connection • Diagrams/Shapes - chunk out and organize information • Data - traditional charts, tables, or oversized metrics • Text - oversized statements create visual pauses for big ideas • Video - varies medium, creates mood, and becomes part of your story's character

• PowerPoint has built-in Design Ideas tab that suggests layouts as you build • SmartArt helps chunk information and handles formatting automatically • Internal company libraries provide templates, but they only provide pretty slides without changing behavior

• Begin with low-stakes presentations or revamping old ones for practice • Focus on one element at a time to build muscle memory • Practice the three-bucket approach and vary the five visualization types

Stop data dumping on slides. Instead, use pen and paper first, add facts and data second, collaborate with others third, then think about visuals last.

When in doubt, ask yourself what you would want to see as an audience - avoid bullet-heavy slides that repeat across presentations and vary your visual approach.

Stay true to the story and the visual second principle. As a storyteller, you build the narrative first, then find resources to bring it to life visually without compromising the story.