Visual and spoken communication

A reader chooses here by the form a message takes when it is not running text: how visuals work, slides, posters and talks, video and multimedia, or illustration and standalone visual formats. It leaves the displays that sit inside a paper to figures and graphs, the perception rules that hold on any page or screen to readable layout, a whole training programme built from these media to training materials for a mixed-media programme, accredited education for clinicians to continuing medical education, the write-up of a congress for readers who were not there to meeting and symposium reports, and the visual and video versions of a trial results summary to choosing a visual or video format for a lay summary.

• Visual communication — whether a message should travel visually, what a visual does to attention and perception, the common failures and colour, pairing a visual with its words, and testing visual aids with patients
• Slides, posters and talks — preparing and delivering a talk, slide decks, conference posters, and asking and answering questions in a public forum
• Video and multimedia — video content, multimedia storyboards, and running a video channel
• Illustration and visual formats — medical illustration and the people who make it, graphic medicine, visual abstracts, graphical abstracts and infographics, and preparing figures and artwork for a document