The 5 Principles and 10 Building Blocks of Persuasive Visual Storytelling
- By Cliff Atkinson
- 11/22/2018
- Introducing the BBP Story Template
- The Five Principles of Visual Storytelling
- Principle 1: Nail Down the Story Before the Slides
- Principle 2: Reformat Your Information for a Yes-No Decision
- Principle 3: Start with No to Get to Yes
- Principle 4: Always Keep the End In Mind
- Principle 5: Think Like a Storyboard
- The 10 Building Blocks of a Persuasive Storyboard
- Building Blocks 1-4: The Hook, The Relevance, The Challenge, and The Desire
- Building Blocks 5-7: The Map, The Anchors, and The Explanation
- Building Blocks 8-10: The Headlines, The Visuals, and The Flow
- Sketching the First Five Slides
- Sketching the Remaining Slides
- Applying Custom Layouts
- Adding Graphics to the First Five Slides
- Adding Graphics to the Remaining Slides
- Stepping Into the Screen
- Documenting the Experience
- Getting Started with the BBP Story Template
- Writing Headlines Using Three Ground Rules
Sketching the First Five Slides
With your clear and concise storyline in place in your slide headlines, and with your narration written out in the off-screen notes area, your next step is to brainstorm an illustration for each headline of each of the Act I slides of your storyboard. In Chapter 7, you’ll do that by sketching a visual idea on each of the five slides, as shown in Figure 3-14, using either printouts of the slides or a touchscreen computer.
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FIGURE 3-14 Once you have a storyboard, sketch a graphic on each of the five slides.
When you do this, your focus is on making full use of the powerful visual channel of your audience members by sketching out a crisp and compelling visual story that complements your clear and concise headlines. Just as your headlines tell a story with only words, your sketches now should complement, enhance, and intensify that story on individual slides, as well as across slides. Here you’ll also plan for both on-screen and off-screen media such as physical props, demonstrations, video, dialogue, or other types of media or interactive techniques.