Today’s post outlines one approach to get your message across more clearly: use color to connect the slide title to the graph.

First, a bit of background. When communicating with data in PowerPoint, your slide title is precious real estate. Your audience is typically looking there first to understand what the slide will display, so we should be using active slide titles to help set their expectations.

Let’s look at an example, adapted from Exercise 5.7 of storytelling with data: Let’s Practice!. The following visual shows a competitive landscape overview for an on-demand printing company.

Consider the slide title. I’d categorize it as an active title because it primes me for what I should see in the forthcoming data. The designer was thoughtful both to put the main point into words and to make the words stand out via their size and placement at the top of the page.

If you’re like me, then you’re probably now searching for evidence of an increase in XBX Business in the graph. You’ll find it eventually, but there are ways to eliminate the need for this tedious search process altogether.

One option is to use the same color between the data and the text, while simultaneously de-emphasizing the rest of the visual with grey. Check out what a difference this makes:

This simple change—the power pairing of color and words—ensures that the audience is more likely to immediately understand the results of all the hard work we’ve done. All we have to do is make it easier for them to see in the first place.

Are there more improvements we can make to this slide? Absolutely—you can download the data and practice improving this visual with me in the SWD community exercise from good to great.