Episode 9.2: Building Your Visuals: Slides, Posters, and Recorded Media

Last updated on 2026-10-05 | Edit this page

Estimated time: 40 minutes

Overview

Questions

  • What should a visual do, and what should it leave to the presenter?
  • How do you design slides that help the audience instead of competing with you?
  • How are posters, written take-aways, and recorded media different from a live talk with slides?

Objectives

Learners will be able to:

  • Turn a headline message into a storyboard of slides, each with one idea.
  • More or critic a slidedeck using principles of text, layout, colour, and accessibility.
  • Simplify a research figure for an audience, and add images, video, or other media on purpose.
  • Describe the main parts of a poster and what makes it work even when the presenter isn’t there.
  • Adapt visuals to different modes: a room, a shared screen, and on-demand viewing.

Think Like a Researcher

Aisha has finished her planning sheet from Episode 9.1. She knows her audience, her headline, and her ABT story. Now she opens the slide software to prepare for the university seminar.

And then, almost without thinking, she pastes in her survey table: 50 rows, 12 columns. On the next slide goes the methods paragraph from her notes. On the next, eight bullet points about sanitation scoring.

She asks her nephew (the one who is good with Excel) to stand at the back of the room and look at the screen. He squints. “Auntie, I can’t read any of this.”

Aisha remembers her posters from the community meeting. People had looked at them, pointed at them, and talked about them. Nobody had squinted.

So what is a slide actually for, if not for holding all the information? Hold on to that question.

A Wise Researcher Once Said…

In their guide to posters, Thomas Erren and Philip Bourne remind presenters that a visitor is “more likely to remember you than the content of your poster.”

That line is about posters, but it applies to every visual in this episode. Your slides, posters, and videos are there to help people connect with you and your message. They are not there to replace you.

Visuals Are Supporting Actors

Good visuals do what words struggle to do alone: show a pattern, reveal a structure, make someone say “oh, I see.” Bad visuals do what you could do better: read the text aloud, in smaller print. A test to keep in mind: if your audience could read the slide instead of listening to you, then one of you is redundant.

In Episode 9.1, we asked whether you or the visuals carry the message. That gives us three families of visuals, and we’ll take them one at a time:

Family Who carries the message? Examples
Speaker-led You, supported by the visuals Slides, flipcharts, objects (models) you hold up
Self-standing The visuals, with you as a bonus Posters, infographics, one-page summaries
On-demand The visuals and recorded voice together Narrated slides, short videos

Part 1: Slides (Speaker-Led Visuals)

Start with a storyboard, not a template

Resist opening the software first. Take your headline and ABT story from your planning sheet and write your slide titles on paper as full sentences that state the point: “Homes with standing water had more repeat malaria”, not “Results”. Read the titles in order. If they tell your story, you’re ready to build. If they don’t, no design will save the talk.

As for order, the traditional research structure (introduction, question, methods, results, discussion, conclusion) works well in formal settings. But remember that your audience is listening, not reading. Many presentation coaches suggest giving people a reason to care early: open with the problem or the finding, then show how you got there.

One idea per slide

  • Make the title the message. A short sentence that tells people what to take from the slide.
  • Lead with a visual. Slides built around a good image, chart, or diagram are stronger than slides made only of text.
  • Use keywords, not sentences. If you need full sentences to remember what to say, put them in your notes, not on the slide.

How many slides? Experts give a range. One suggests about one slide per minute; another suggests as many as two per minute for fast-paced talks (about 30 seconds each).
In reality, it depends on your style and content, so treat it as a starting point and calibrate by rehearsing in Episode 9.3. What matters is that each slide is simple enough to take in at that speed.

If a slide doesn’t serve your headline, cut it. Interesting but non-essential material can wait in backup slides at the end of the file, ready if someone asks.

Design basics

You don’t need to be a designer. Adopting a few good habits goes a long way:

  • Make it readable. Use a large, plain (sans-serif) font. If you keep shrinking the text to fit, there’s too much text.
  • Keep contrast high and colours few. Dark on light (or the reverse), a simple background, and two or three colours used with purpose.
  • Don’t rely on colour alone. Some people can’t tell certain colours apart. Label lines and bars directly, or use shapes and patterns as well.
  • Be consistent, with a little variety. Use the same layout, fonts, and positions throughout so the audience isn’t re-learning your slides, but change the type of slide now and then (image, chart, quote) to keep attention fresh.
  • Credit your sources. Put a short citation under any image, figure, or quotation that isn’t yours.
  • Stay in one language. Mixing languages across slides looks confusing unless you’ve done it on purpose.

Presenting data

Research figures are made for careful reading. Slides are seen for seconds. So a chart lifted straight from a paper rarely works unchanged. Instead:

  • Show the key comparison, not the whole dataset. The audience needs the one pattern that supports your headline.
  • Highlight the finding. Use colour or contrast for what matters and mute the rest. Remove gridlines and clutter that add noise but no information.
  • Label honestly. Name your axes with units and state how many were studied (for example, N = 50), so the picture can be trusted.
  • Build complex diagrams in steps. Reveal a flow chart piece by piece instead of showing it all at once.

Back to Aisha: her 50-by-12 table becomes a single, simple bar chart comparing repeat malaria across good, fair, and poor sanitation homes. The title says what to see, one bar is highlighted, and “N = 50 homes” sits in the corner. The full table waits in a backup slide.

To-do: Add a before-and-after slide infographic here.

Images, video, and other media

Media can make your talk more vivid, but only when it earns its place:

  • Images: A photograph of the actual standing water beside a house will say more than a bullet point ever could.
  • Short video or demonstration: A brief clip or a quick live demonstration can break up a long talk and show a process that words can’t.
  • Interaction: A quick poll or question to the audience (in a room, on a screen, or both) keeps people involved.
  • Animation: Use it to reveal one point at a time, not to decorate. Spinning logos distract more than they help.

Whatever you use, test it on the equipment you’ll actually use, add captions to any video with speech, and keep a plain version of your slides (such as a PDF) ready in case the software fails.

Callout

💡 Open images, with credit

In Module 12, we learn that openness applies to your visuals too. Look for images released under open licences (such as Creative Commons), and always credit the creator as the licence asks. It keeps you legal, it respects the artist, and it lets others reuse your visuals too if you share them openly.

No projector? Informal and low-tech visuals

Not every presentation happens with a screen. At Aisha’s community meeting, her visuals might be hand-drawn posters, a clear jar of stagnant water, or a few photographs passed around. Low-tech is still design: the same rules of one idea, large lettering, and clear message apply. Low-tech is also more reliable, because it survives power cuts and missing projectors. When in doubt, bring a paper backup.

Part 2: Posters (Self-Standing Visuals)

What a poster is for

A poster is not a paper stuck on a wall, and it’s not a talk frozen in time. Erren and Bourne describe it as a snapshot of your work, meant to start a conversation, and to speak for you when you’re not there. That makes it a medium of its own, with its own rules.

Slides Poster
Who sets the order? You do The visitor does
How long do people look? A few seconds per slide, then it moves on As long as they like, but they decide in seconds whether to stop
Words A few keywords Short, tight text
When you’re absent The slides are not as useful The poster still makes sense

Anatomy of a good poster

  • A title that works as a headline. Visitors judge from a distance, and your title may be the only thing they read before deciding to stop. Make it big, clear, and ideally a message, not a label.
  • A clear path. Use a small number of labelled sections in an obvious reading order, such as Why we asked → What we did → What we found → What it means → What’s next.
  • Visuals first, text second. Make figures large enough to read from a step or two away. Keep text short - a widely used guideline is that body text should never be smaller than about 24 points, with the title much bigger.
  • Room to breathe. White space isn’t wasted space; it’s what makes the path visible. If the poster looks full, it is too full.
  • A way to learn more. Add your contact details, key references, and a QR code linking to the full paper, data, or materials. This is open science in action: anyone who wants to check or reuse your work can. If you can, offer small handouts of the poster as well.
  • Something of you. People remember the person, so be easy to approach. We’ll practise the short spoken “poster pitch” in the next episode.

Written take-aways

Posters aren’t the only self-standing format. A one-page summary, a lay summary (a plain-language description of your study), or an infographic can travel further than you can. Put the headline at the top, add one strong visual, use everyday words, and say where to find more. Aisha might turn her findings into a one-page flyer for the homes she visited, in the local language. You learned the principles of clear written communication in Module 8 and here, you can apply them to a single page.

Part 3: Recorded and On-Demand Visuals

Visuals made for people watching in their own time face a different challenge: your audience can pause, skip, or leave, and you can’t see their faces to adjust. Some adjustments help:

  • Hook early and keep it short. State the headline within the first moments, and stay brief. Think of one clear idea, not a full seminar.
  • Design for small screens. Many viewers will watch on a phone, so large text and uncluttered images matter even more.
  • Add captions and a transcript. They help viewers with auditory impairments, those who are in noisy places, or people watching in a second language.
  • Plan for low bandwidth. Offer a downloadable version of your slides or an audio-only option for people with slow connections.

Common recorded formats include narrated slides, a screen recording, and a short explainer video. We’ll talk about recording and speaking on camera soon.

Callout

💡 Four quick checks for any visual

  1. The squint test: Blur your eyes. Can you still see what’s most important?
  2. The back-of-the-room test: Can someone at the back, or on a phone, read it?
  3. The ten-second test: Can someone who sees only the visual say your headline?
  4. The “delete it” test: If you removed this element, would anyone miss it?

Reflection

Think of the best and the worst slide (or poster) you’ve ever seen. What made the difference? Was it the amount of text, the images, or how the speaker used it?

Test Your Knowledge!

Challenge

Challenge 1: Fix this slide

Here is a slide from an early draft of Aisha’s talk:

Results - Of the 50 households surveyed, households were grouped into good, fair, and poor sanitation using the checklist - Children in poor-sanitation households had more repeat malaria episodes than those in good-sanitation households - This agrees with previous studies in similar settings - More research is needed

Rewrite the title, and describe what visual would replace the text.

One good answer:

  • Title: “Children in poorer-sanitation homes had malaria more often.”
  • Visual: A simple bar chart with three bars (good, fair, poor sanitation), repeat malaria episodes on the vertical axis, the poor-sanitation bar highlighted, and “N = 50 homes” noted.
  • What happens to the rest: The grouping method can be said aloud or placed in a backup slide. The comparison with earlier studies and the “more research” point can be spoken, or move to a later slide about what comes next.
Challenge

Challenge 2: Pick the visual

Which kind of visual suits each situation best: slides, poster, narrated video, or hand-drawn flipchart and objects?

  1. A formal 10-minute seminar to public health students.
  2. A two-hour poster session where you’d like feedback on early results.
  3. An informal evening talk in a village hall with no projector.
  4. A short update for colleagues across time zones who can’t attend live.
  1. Slides. A speaker-led, formal setting.
  2. Poster. Self-standing, designed for conversation.
  3. Flipchart and objects (with a paper backup). They work without power or a screen.
  4. Narrated video. Watchable at any time, and shareable with captions.
Challenge

Challenge 3: Which poster title works?

Which title would work best at the top of Aisha’s poster, read from a few metres away?

  • A. An Observational Cross-sectional Study of Environmental Sanitation Indices and Paediatric Malaria Recurrence
  • B. Where water stands and rubbish piles up, children have more malaria
  • C. Malaria Poster
  • D. (The full abstract, printed in small type)

B. It states the message in plain words, in one line.
A is accurate but dense, C is only a label, and D buries the message in tiny text.

Put It Into Practice

Challenge

Planning Sheet, Part 2: Your Storyboard

Return to your Planning Sheet from Episode 9.1. Using your headline and ABT story:

  1. Write the titles for a 10-minute talk as full sentences (aim for roughly 8 to 15, following the rule-of-thumb range above).
  2. Next to each title, note the visual you’d use (photo, simple chart, diagram, or none).
  3. Mark which slides could move to backup.

If your chosen format is a poster, list your section headings and your title instead.

A sample for the first few slides of Aisha’s seminar:

# Title (the message) Visual
1 Children in our town keep missing school because of malaria Photo of an empty classroom desk
2 Nobody had checked whether the state of our surroundings plays a part Simple map of the town
3 We visited 50 homes and scored the surroundings with a checklist Photo of the checklist
4 Homes with poorer sanitation had malaria more often Bar chart, poor-sanitation bar highlighted
5 The next step is a clean-up that starts where the pattern is strongest Map with highlighted areas
Backup Full scoring table, how borderline cases were handled Table

What’s Next?

You have a message, a story, and visuals to carry them. But a perfect slide deck can still fall flat if the delivery stumbles. In Episode 9.3, we’ll step into the room (and onto the screen): practising, pacing, handling nerves, speaking live, virtually, in hybrid settings, and on camera. We’ll also discuss running interactive formats like workshops and webinars, and welcoming questions, including the ones you can’t answer.

Show the “bad slide” from Challenge 1 and ask, “Who can read this from the back?” before teaching anything.

Create a consciousness about presenting in low-resource or low-connectivity settings.

Where learners use different software, avoid prescribing a tool - focus on the principles, which are the same everywhere.

Discuss accessibility openly: ask who has struggled to read a slide, hear a video, or open a file, and what would have helped.

Key Points
  • Visuals support but cannot replace you. If the audience could just read the slide, the slide is doing your job.
  • Storyboard first: write slide titles as full sentences that state the point, and let the visuals show it.
  • Keep one idea per slide, readable text, high contrast, and few colours, and don’t rely on colour alone.
  • Simplify figures to the key comparison, label them honestly, and use media only where it earns its place.
  • Posters work when you’re absent: a headline title, a clear path, big visuals, short text, white space, and a QR code to learn more.
  • For recorded media, hook early, stay short, add captions, and plan for small screens and low bandwidth.