Traditional (nonvisual) Spoken Presentation

Watch the below video from Emma Watson (2014) called “Gender Equality Is Your Issue Too”

In a traditional (nonvisual) spoken presentation, you should consider several specific elements in the creation of an effective presentation.  These elements are the argument, the audience, the tone, and the presenter’s body language, eye contact, and appearance. Consider Watson’s presentation as it relates to these elements:

• Her argument: gender equality is important and necessary and should be pursued by men and women
• Her audience: the U.N.
• Her tone: passionate and insistent but not uncontrolled
• Her body language and eye contact: she stands straight and looks around at her audience
• The way she is dressed: professionally

A presentation’s success may often hinge on how well the presenter addresses each of these elements. For instance, failing to make eye contact or dressing inappropriately for the occasion can make the audience distrust you or suspect you are not knowledgeable.

Modern

Most presentations that you give in college and your career will be formal or semi-formal and include visuals.

For example, in a speech-communication class, you may be asked to dress and stand a certain way on the day you give your speech. You may be graded on movement and use of “filler words” (“like,” “um,” etc.). Most likely, you will also be asked to incorporate a PowerPoint or Prezi to enhance your speech.

In an English class, you may be asked to do a less formal presentation where you teach a lesson or a chapter or share a project. Again, some sort of visual will probably be expected in order to engage the audience. 

At your place of employment, your boss may ask you to present reports on the financial nuances over the previous quarter. You will be expected to have the results organized in both print and visual format to help your colleagues understand the information.

Slideshow Presentations

There are various ways to create a modern, visual presentation. Some of the most popular:

• Adobe
• Canva
• Google Slides
• PowerPoint
• Prezi
• Sway

Table 1.1 Do’s and Don’ts  of Slideshow Presentations

Presentation Tips

Visual Appearance

• Choose a creative, non-distracting background.
• Choose easy-to-read and easy-to-see fonts and colors.
• Choose an easy-to-follow structure (such as bullet points).
• Choose images that support/enhance your presentation. For example, if you are presenting an argument about the dangers of smoking, an image of a child being affected by smoking is an incredibly effective appeal to pathos
• Make sure the slides are balanced; do not include too much information on one slide as it may distract your audience from the ideas. If audience members are confused or distracted, they are not thinking about your argument.
• If you are presenting material from a book or essay, be sure to include direct quotes; pick and choose the main ideas and offer examples.

•  Make sure you are familiar with the software you choose.
• Practice. Practice. Practice. Whether you are alone or working in a group, it is important to your credibility that you are prepared for your speaking part.
• Make eye contact, move around, speak loudly and slowly, have organized notes, and get a good night’s sleep.
• Do not turn your back to the audience, hide behind a podium or monitor, or mumble or speak to the floor. Your audience is in front of you.
• Remember, even if you do not feel confident, it is all right to fake it. The audience may never know, and sounding confident makes your argument more persuasive and convincing.

Multimodals and Visual Arguments

In today’s visually oriented culture, arguments increasingly use photographs, drawings, graphics, and innovative page and text design for persuasive effect. This is referred to as multimodals, which are works that go beyond conventional print and alphabetic writing to include other modes of communication, like images, video, and sound.  Multimodality is the use of more than one type of literacy within a single work. Multimodals combine modes of communication, and visuals may be used to complement an essay; however, this section will also address how a visual—like an infographic or flier—may be an effective visual argument by itself.

As we shall see, visuals and audio can enhance the effectiveness of an argument by supporting or clarifying an argument’s logical core, moving audiences imaginatively and emotionally, or enhancing the writer’s credibility and authority. They can also substantially enliven a writer’s argument, keeping readers hooked and engaged.

There is enormous rhetorical potential in the use of visual and audio elements in arguments, particularly the way visual and audio elements can collaborate to achieve persuasive effects.

Using visuals and audio in arguments also poses challenges. It places on arguers an even greater burden to understand their audience, to think through the effect visuals will have on that audience, and to make sure that all parts of an argument work together.

Guidelines for Creating Multimodals  and Visual Arguments

1. Genre: Determine where this visual argument is going to appear (bulletin board, passed out as a flyer, imagined as a one-page magazine or newspaper spread, or as a Web page).

2. Audience-based appeals: Determine your target audience. Consider the demographics of your intended audience: age, location, economic status, political affiliation, gender, ethnicity, language(s), disabilities, employment status, home ownership, level of education, etc.

a. What values and background knowledge of your issue can you assume that your audience has?

b. What specifically do you want your audience to think or do after reading your visual argument?  

c. If you are promoting a specific course of action (sign a petition, send money, vote for or against a bill, attend a meeting), how can you make that request clear and direct?

3. Core of your argument: Determine what clear claim and reasons will form the core of your argument; decide if this claim and these reasons will be explicitly stated or implicit in your visuals and slogans.  

a. How much verbal text will you use?

b. If the core of your argument will be largely implicit, how can you still make it readily apparent and clear for your audience?

4. Visual design: What visual design and layout will grab your audience’s attention and be persuasive? See the Design Considerations above for guidelines in visual design.

a. What image would be memorable and meaningful to your audience? Would a photo image or a drawing be most effective?

b. Will your image(s) be used to provide evidence for your claim or illustrate a main idea, evoke emotions, or enhance your credibility and authority?

c. Remember to cite your images in the format assigned if required by your instructor (MLA, APA, etc.).

The Genres of Visual Arguments and Multimodals

Essay with visuals

Table 1.2 Do’s and Don’ts of Using Visuals

Infographics

Infographics have become a common genre online to visually communicate information and ideas. Infographics work well in digital environments due to their multimodal designs that combine images, text, charts, and graphs. Infographics are used for all kinds of purposes and take on many shapes, but they often are used to show a process, to show visual relationships, and to communicate facts and data about a particular topic of concern

Q: What is an infographic?

A: An infographic (information graphic) is a representation of information in a graphic format designed to make the data easily understandable at a glance.

People use infographics to quickly communicate a message, simplify the presentation of large amounts of data, see data patterns and relationships, and monitor changes in variables.  Infographics have become increasingly popular because of their ability to quickly convey large amounts of information in an appealing package.  

Table 1.3 Do’s and Don’ts of Infographics

Posters and Fliers  

To persuade audiences, an arguer might create a poster designed for placement on walls or kiosks or a flyer to be passed out on street corners. Posters dramatically attract and direct viewers’ attention toward one subject or issue. They often seek to rally supporters, promote a strong stance on an issue, and call people to action. For example, during World War II, posters asked Americans to invest in war bonds and urged women to join the workforce to free men for active combat.

Figure 3.2 World War II Poster 

The hallmark of an effective poster is the way it focuses and encodes a complex meaning in a verbal-visual text, often with one or more striking images. These images are often symbolic—for example, using children to symbolize family and home, a soaring bird to symbolize freedom, or three firefighters raising the American flag over the World Trade Center rubble on September 11, 2001, to symbolize American heroism, patriotism, and resistance to terrorism. These symbols derive potency from the values they share with their target audience. Posters tend to use words sparingly, either as slogans or as short, memorable directives. This terse verbal text augments the message encoded in an eye-catching, dominant image.

Flyers and brochures often use visual elements similar to those in posters. An image might be the top and center attraction of a flyer or the main focus of the front cover of a brochure.   However, unlike posters, flyers and brochures offer additional space for verbal arguments, which often present the writer’s claim supported with bulleted lists of reasons. Sometimes pertinent data and statistics, along with testimony from supporters, are placed in boxes or sidebars.  

Public Service Announcements

Public service announcements (PSAs) share with posters an emphasis on visual elements, but they are designed specifically for publication in newspapers and magazines and, in their persuasive strategies, are directly analogous to product advertisements. Public service announcements are usually sponsored by a corporation or an advocacy organization and often have a more time-sensitive message than do posters and a more immediate and defined target audience.

Designed as condensed arguments aimed at influencing public opinion on civic issues, these ads are characterized by their brevity, audience-based appeals, and succinct, “sound bite” style. Often, in order to sketch out their claim and reasons clearly and concisely, they employ headings and subheadings, bulleted lists, different sizes and styles of type, and a clever, pleasing layout on the page. They usually have some attention-getting slogan or headline like “MORE KIDS ARE GETTING BRAIN CANCER. WHY?” or “STOP THE TAX REVOLT JUGGERNAUT!” The Ad Council offers a library of PSAs on their website.

Figure 3.3 Public Service Announcement Example

The balance between verbal and visual elements in a PSA varies. Some PSAs are verbal only with visual concerns focused on document design (for example, an “open letter” from the president of a corporation appearing as a full-page newspaper ad). Others are primarily visual, using images and other design elements with the same shrewdness as advertisements

Because reproducing high-quality images (especially color images) is expensive in a print medium, writers of argument prior to the Web often relied mainly on verbal text. But the Web has now made it possible to publish arguments incorporating powerful color images. The hypertext design of Web pages, along with its complex intermixture of text and image, has changed the way many writers think of argument. The home page of an advocacy site, for example, often has many features of a poster argument with hypertext links to galleries of images on the one hand, and to verbal arguments on the other. These verbal arguments themselves often contain videos, photographs, drawings, and graphics. The strategies discussed in this textbook for analyzing and interpreting visual texts also apply to Web pages.

When designing a website or evaluating one, you should consider the following details (see “How to Set up a Website in 2020: An Updated Beginner’s Guide“):

• Decide on a platform.
• Before you start worrying about [color] schemes and domain names, you’ve got to decide what platform you’re going to build your website with.
• Find a domain name and host.
• To get a new website online, you’re going to need two things:
  • a domain name (a web address like yoursitename.com); and
  • hosting (a service that connects your site to the Internet).
• Set up and tweak your website.
• Once you’ve bought your domain name and set up your hosting, you’re well on your way!
• Now it’s time to get your website up and running. There are numerous free (WordPress, Joomla) and pay (Wix, Squarespace) website builders.
• Keep in mind a website is a reflection of a company, a school, or you. It should be easy to locate (so never have a very complicated title/search term), use appealing colors and images, and include helpful easy-to-use links.