The 5 Principles and 10 Building Blocks of Persuasive Visual Storytelling

Sketching the First Five Slides

With your clear and concise storyline in place in your slide headlines, and with your narration written out in the off-screen notes area, your next step is to brainstorm an illustration for each headline of each of the Act I slides of your storyboard. In Chapter 7, you’ll do that by sketching a visual idea on each of the five slides, as shown in Figure 3-14, using either printouts of the slides or a touchscreen computer.

FIGURE 3-14

FIGURE 3-14 Once you have a storyboard, sketch a graphic on each of the five slides.

When you do this, your focus is on making full use of the powerful visual channel of your audience members by sketching out a crisp and compelling visual story that complements your clear and concise headlines. Just as your headlines tell a story with only words, your sketches now should complement, enhance, and intensify that story on individual slides, as well as across slides. Here you’ll also plan for both on-screen and off-screen media such as physical props, demonstrations, video, dialogue, or other types of media or interactive techniques.