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Adding Graphics
When delivering slideshows in person, it can often be very effective to use a slide that features just a single image and no text. Skilled speakers will use such slides as backdrops, the audience focusing their attention of the speakers’ words. But when slides are presented online, things are a bit different. Slides containing just graphics alone will often be skipped unless it’s obvious why the viewer needs to spend time looking at them.
Broadly then, slides with images need to have captions and/or labels. But too many bits of text dotted about an image will create clutter, and clutter reduces the effectiveness of your slideshow. The best way to work around this is to reveal only one bit of text at a time. There are two approaches you can take here:
- One is to show a succession of slides each with the same image but only one caption or label visible at a time.
- The second approach is to add the captions or labels in turn, but each time adjusting the color of the captions or labels so older ones are less obtrusive.
In the example shown in Figure 5, this second approach is taken. At top left, the slide is shown with a single caption. At top right is the next slide in the slideshow, with a second caption added. Note that the first caption has had its text changed from black to grey. This immediately removes it from the focus of the viewer, ensuring that the person looking at this slide now shifts his or her attention to the new caption. The bottom-right and bottom-left slides show how this process might be continued until four different captions have been revealed.
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Figure 5 By successively switching earlier captions from black to grey, focus is shifted to the most recent caption without completely losing the older ones.