From the vaults - Flipcharts

I posted some thoughts on using Flipcharts on this blog back in November 2006 - partially as an excuse to share with you some superb material from a young man called Demetri Martin. I linked, as we all so often do, to a piece on YouTube, but got a helpful comment a few months later from Mohit telling me that the vid I had been using was gone. So I did what any Little Red Hen would do and posted the material up on YouTube myself. I didn't include any keywords on it, nor even Mr Martin's name; as I was only posting it to illustrate how cleverly and strongly the much-maligned Flipchart could be utilised with just a bit of thought and creativity.

In nine months, it's had 1.2 million hits, 3,600 ratings, and over a thousand people have commented on it. You never can tell what is going to attract people's attention, can you?

Flipcharts - Some More Thoughts

• Make sure the Flipchart is placed under a strong light for maximum visibility.

• Use markers thick enough for visibility at the back of the room you are in. Carry your own, in several thicknesses.

• Fill the page! Your overriding concern should be impact, not the rainforests. Don't quarter up the page unless you are showing a matrix. Draw it big on four separate pages and spread them out on the walls. For once in your life, behave as though you hate trees ...

• Bring Blu-Tak or similar, so you can festoon the walls with the key ideas that come out of the discussion.
  

• Use colour and establish your protocols in this regard early in your talk - red for good, blue for bad, green for take note, and so forth ... Tie this in with the colour protocol you use in your PowerPoints and/or handouts.

• From an audience perspective, flipcharts = spontaneity, particularly if your moving over to the flipchart means getting a break from PowerPoint. Capitalise upon that feeling of spontaneity in the way in which you use that large pad of paper.
  

• Make it interactive, get your audience to shout out ideas, finish your sentences or fill in the blanks. Bring an audience member up to do a drawing or fill in a chart. Draw an outline of someone's head and shoulders and let that outline represent senior management, or your most important customer, or a target ...
  

• Pictures or words? Capture ideas and suggestions from the audience with words. Espouse ONE BIG IDEA that you need them to take away in words. Otherwise, use imagery - simple charts, matrices, crude drawings and analogies. If you are not a confident doodler [like me] see below.
  

• Use prepared materials [pre-prepared?] on the flipchart. Bring a pad of your own with you, or sketch in your thoughts in light pencil in advance of the session. That way, you are not worried about content, or spacing and layout issues and you can focus on the audience and their energy.

• Borrow liberally. If you have seen a good way of presenting an idea using this medium, borrow it, adapt it, use it. Sure, over a million people have seen this clip of Demetri on YouTube, but that leaves 5,999,000,000 on planet Earth who haven't, so try the glass of beer trick, or the I-don't-believe-it face.

• Body language, body language, body language. If you are writing on a flipchart, it can tend to put your back to your audience quite a bit. Hence minimal words. Hence simple visual ideas that you can pop up there in a matter of seconds. Hence pencil-sketched-in prepared materials.
  

• Try this - if you are right-handed and stand to the left of the flipchart, you will have to turn your back on your audience as you write. If you stand on the right of the flipchart, you can still draw/write on the pad, but you keep your body facing the audience as you do so:
  

Photo credit: Tilwe

My original post, with a bonus clip of more usage of the Large Pad by the excellent Mr. Martin, is here.