How to Use Visual Storytelling in Presentations [Answered]
- Ink Narrates | The Presentation Design Agency
- May 13, 2021
- 7 min read
Updated: Aug 29
Last week, our client Jon asked us a question while we were crafting his product launch deck. He looked at one of our slides and said,
“How do you make information feel like a story without using a single word?”
Our Creative Director answered,
“We show, we don’t tell.”
As a presentation design agency, we work on many visual storytelling in presentation projects throughout the year. And through all those decks — whether they’re sales, investor, or strategy presentations — we’ve noticed one challenge almost every team struggles with: They confuse decoration with communication.
A few icons here, a pretty background there, maybe a stock photo to fill the slide. That’s not storytelling. That’s dressing up data in a Halloween costume.
In this blog, we’ll break down how to actually use visuals to tell a story — a story your audience follows, remembers, and acts on.
In case you didn't know, we specialize in only one thing: making presentations. We can help you by designing your slides and writing your content too.
What Is the Importance of Visual Storytelling in Presentations
You can have all the right data, the perfect pitch, even a killer product — but if your audience doesn't understand or remember what you're saying, none of it matters. That’s the harsh truth most people overlook.
Visual storytelling fixes that. Not by making things prettier, but by making them stick.
When you tell a story visually, you're not just dumping information on people. You’re guiding their attention, setting the pace, and controlling how they absorb what you’re saying. It’s the difference between handing someone a map and throwing them into a maze.
Here’s what we’ve noticed after building hundreds of high-stakes presentations — the visuals that work aren't the ones with the most colors or animations. They're the ones that mirror the story being told. If the message is about contrast, the slide shows contrast. If the message is about growth, the slide shows motion. If the message is about clarity, the slide removes clutter.
Why does that matter? Because humans don’t retain raw facts. We remember what we can connect emotionally to. And visuals shortcut that connection. They reduce cognitive effort and make information intuitive.
This isn’t just design theory. We’ve watched executives respond differently when the same point is told visually versus verbally. Their expressions change. Their posture shifts. They engage.
That shift? That’s the power of visual storytelling in presentations. It builds a bridge between your message and your audience’s mind — without forcing them to work for it.
How to Use Visual Storytelling in Presentations
Let’s get something out of the way — visual storytelling isn’t about “making slides look good.” It’s about making slides make sense. And not just to you, but to the person on the other side of the table who has zero context about your business, your product, or your message.
We’ve seen too many decks where the story is locked inside the presenter’s head, while the slides are off doing their own thing — charts dumped in, text blocks copied from reports, images thrown in because “it looks nice.”
Here’s the thing. When you're using visual storytelling in presentations, the slide should do two things:
Set the emotional tone.
Deliver the key message in a way that sticks.
Everything else is secondary. So how do you do that? Let’s walk through it. No fluff. Just what works.
1. Start With the Story, Not the Slides
The most common mistake we see? People jumping into PowerPoint before they know what they’re trying to say.
If you don’t have a narrative, your visuals have nothing to support. You can’t “design your way” out of a scattered message. So, before opening any design tool, ask yourself three things:
What’s the one thing I want my audience to remember?
Why should they care?
What should they do after this presentation?
Everything else is built around those answers.
Let’s say you’re pitching a new product to investors. Your core message is, “This product fills a market gap that no one else is addressing, and we’re already gaining traction.”
Great. Now your job is to build that story visually — not with words, but with evidence people can see and emotion they can feel.
2. Turn Data Into Drama
Numbers don’t sell. But what those numbers represent can.
If you’re showing a graph, don’t just show the Xs and Ys. Show why that graph matters. Instead of dumping a chart of revenue growth over five years, highlight the jump that happened after a product pivot. Use contrast. Circle that point. Add a simple visual cue — like a rising arrow or a zoom effect — that pulls the eye.
We once designed a deck where the only slide shown to the board was a single bar going off the chart, paired with the line: “Here’s what happened when we stopped doing things the old way.”
That’s visual storytelling. It makes your data impossible to ignore.
A good rule: if your slide needs you to explain what the data means, it’s not visual storytelling yet.
3. Use Metaphors to Simplify the Complex
If your audience isn’t from your industry, they probably won’t understand half your terminology. But they’ll understand a visual metaphor.
You’re talking about cloud migration? Show a paper airplane taking off. You’re explaining platform integration? Use interlocking gears. You’re pitching a brand refresh? Show a before-and-after of a city skyline.
These aren’t just decoration. They help your audience map something unfamiliar onto something they already understand.
We once worked with a cybersecurity firm who couldn’t get their clients to understand what they actually did. So instead of using technical diagrams, we built their core slide like a home security layout — doors, windows, locks. It clicked instantly. Their next pitch closed in 40 minutes flat.
That’s the power of visual metaphor. It doesn’t dumb things down. It sharpens clarity.
4. Design One Idea Per Slide
Clutter kills comprehension. Your audience isn’t sitting there taking notes. They’re processing information in real time, and they can’t do that if your slide is a wall of content.
One idea per slide. That’s it. If you have two points to make, split them. Don’t squeeze them in side by side or top and bottom. Spread them out. Give them space to breathe.
We follow this principle religiously in client decks. In fact, if a slide has more than 20 words, we ask why.
Also — your audience is likely reading the slide before you’ve even opened your mouth. Don’t compete with that. Use your visuals to set up your message, not steal attention from it.
5. Use Visual Flow to Control Attention
Visual storytelling isn’t just about what you show — it’s about how you guide people through what you show.
Your slide layout needs to have a visual hierarchy. The big stuff comes first. The focal point is obvious.
Supporting elements don’t shout. White space isn’t a design trick — it’s how people know what to look at.
We use techniques like contrast, alignment, and negative space to pull focus. Sometimes, just making one number bolder than the rest is enough to direct attention.
Animations? Use them wisely. A simple fade-in can be more powerful than a fancy zoom or spin. The point isn’t to impress people with effects. It’s to control when they see each piece of information — like a director cueing a scene.
6. Match the Visual Tone to the Message
If your story is about innovation, your slides shouldn’t look like they were made in 2011. If you’re talking about risk, your visuals shouldn’t be overly cheerful.
The tone of your design — fonts, colors, icons, imagery — speaks before you do. We once rebuilt a corporate deck where the message was about urgent transformation, but the original slides had soft blues and rounded icons. It felt passive. Unconcerned.
We shifted to bolder typography, sharper color contrast, and more direct language. Same content, but now the visuals backed the urgency. That deck didn’t just land better — it got the CFO’s approval in under ten minutes.
7. Rehearse With the Slides, Not Around Them
Here’s a harsh truth: your delivery will fall flat if the slides don’t support the pacing of your story.
Too often, people rehearse around their slides — using them as background noise instead of as part of the performance.
But in a great presentation, slides are timing devices. They cue your beats. They give your story rhythm. If your slide transitions are off, or you’re skipping through too quickly, the story breaks.
We encourage clients to rehearse with slide timing in mind. When should a graph appear? When should a quote fade in? When should a visual hold for silence?
These small details shape how your message lands.
8. Keep Consistency Without Killing Personality
Consistency is key. But too much rigidity can strip the life out of your story.
What we aim for is visual consistency with story-driven flexibility. That means:
Same font styles, but varied sizes for emphasis
A consistent color palette, but shifts in saturation to show contrast
Layout templates, but freedom to break the grid when the message demands it
This balance keeps your deck professional without making every slide feel like a cloned copy of the last.
We’ve seen decks where every slide looks exactly the same — same layout, same visual weight, same rhythm. And guess what? The audience checked out halfway through.
Don’t be afraid to surprise. That’s what stories do.
9. Design for the Room (or the Screen)
One last thing — context matters. A slide that works in a 10-person meeting might fail in a 500-person keynote. A design made for a projector might not read well on Zoom.
That’s why we always ask our clients:
Where are you presenting?
Who are you presenting to?
What do you want them to feel?
These aren’t throwaway questions. They decide font size. Color contrast. Slide pacing. Animation use. Visual scale.
A good story badly delivered is still a bad presentation. Your visuals have to be engineered for the room, not just the idea.
Why Hire Us to Build your Presentation?
If you're reading this, you're probably working on a presentation right now. You could do it all yourself. But the reality is - that’s not going to give you the high-impact presentation you need. It’s a lot of guesswork, a lot of trial and error. And at the end of the day, you’ll be left with a presentation that’s “good enough,” not one that gets results. On the other hand, we’ve spent years crafting thousands of presentations, mastering both storytelling and design. Let us handle this for you, so you can focus on what you do best.