Activate Your Story: Aligning Visual Metaphors with Your Presentation Designs
A great story doesn’t just tell—it transforms.
At its heart lies adversity: the challenges the protagonist must overcome to achieve their transformation. This journey of growth is the story we carry back into the world, reshaped and revitalized.
Presentations guide your audience through your narrative—
…from unknowing to understanding,
…from complacency to enthusiasm,
…from inaction to action.
They’re not static; they’re dynamic vehicles of transition—for your ideas, your audience, and perhaps even yourself.
While the spoken points to the obvious, it’s your your visual metaphors that bear the weight of complexity. They make abstract concepts tangible and ground your ideas in something your audience can see, feel, and remember.
A thoughtful metaphor does more than decorate— it activates, making your message feel polished, professional and unforgettable.
Think Like a Designer: Developing Visual Metaphors
1. Before the Design
Visual metaphors thrive when they reflect the essence of your story and your brand. Developing your tone of voice, visual language, and digital presence begins before the first slide. If you’re still refining this process, the Before the Slides guide offers insights to help you design presentations that align your visuals, tone, and messaging from the start.
You can download the guide here.
2. Start with the Whole
Before diving into individual slides, ask:
What’s the overarching theme of my presentation?
Are you guiding your audience through a journey of leadership growth? Personal change? or, Do you want to inspire their help in driving meaningful change in the world?
Once you’ve established your overarching theme, consider how this relates to the mood of your brand. If you were to ask your brand how to express your theme, what would it say? What imagery comes to mind?
3. Align with Your Audience
With a sense of your macro-theme forming, take a moment. Consider how the imagery might resonate with your audience’s unique perspective, expectations and receptivity.
Every audience archetype—corporate, minimalist, or interactive—responds differently to visual storytelling:
𓂃 ࣪˖ Corporate groups might prefer reserved, abstract visuals.
𓂃 ࣪˖ Minimalist audiences thrive on clean, refined designs.
𓂃 ࣪˖ Interactive workshops embrace bold, playful imagery.
Understand their preferences and thresholds for complexity, and avoid visuals that feel too abstract or overly literal.
Note: Not all people in your audience will receive information in the same way. Think about who the primary decision makers in your audience are. Speak to them.
4. Break It Down Slide by Slide
Once you have an overarching theme and some thoughts about how your audience will connect with your vision, it’s time to think about your slide script— what you will say, slide by slide.
Important note: If you don’t have your slide script, planning your visuals should wait. Developing your script first will make for a far more efficient process when it comes to slide design.
Consider the core idea of each slide (there should only be one) and how it relates to the theme. There is no single way to make the connection between your overarching metaphor and the imagery you choose for each slide. It may be linear, abstract, horizontal or something else. But, there should be a relationship between each element on the slide and your overarching vision as a whole.
Deeply connecting with your presentation story and your audience is, in itself, an act of art. It begins with taking the time to think and reflect.
You are inviting the audience into your world.
Think beyond clichés. Instead, craft imagery that penetrates and reveals the singularity of your message. 𓍯𓂃𓏧♡
5. Weaving Your Metaphor
Once you’ve defined the metaphor for your presentation’s theme and each slide’s message, think about how to integrate it. Whether it’s a subtle thread or a bold focal point, your metaphor should feel clean, balanced, and aligned with your story.
And don’t forget: your metaphor isn’t just a design decision—it’s an organic extension of the narrative you’ve shaped. The visual harmony between your tone of voice, visuals, and content ensures your audience connects not just with the idea but with you.
Uncovering the Encoded Potential
Every presentation carries a unique potential—a quiet encoding of its purpose, its message, and its impact. This potential is not something you impose; it’s something you uncover.
The co-arising of visuals and narrative that emerges as you weave together the strands of your brand, your vision, and your story extends beyond the moment of delivery. It’s a facet of a greater whole, aligning the speaker’s goals with the actions inspired in the audience.
When crafted with intention, a presentation becomes a shared endeavor—a magical process of creation in which both presenter and audience play a part.
Every presentation has the potential to change everything.
Including and especially your audience.
Imagine the future of presentation design with AI imaging: here.
Let’s create something extraordinary 𓍯𓂃𓏧♡
