While PowerPoint often dominates the visual scene during presentations and training sessions, flip charts are ever-present. Learning how to make flip charts can add an important visual element to your session.

One of the many advantages that flip charting holds over PowerPoint is that when a slide is advanced, it’s gone… but your flip charts can hang on the wall for as long as you need them to!

Here are 9 ideas to up your flip chart game:

1. Choose the Best Flip Chart Markers

Readers of this blog know I’m partial to Mr. Sketch markers. They have fun smells, they write smoothly, they don’t bleed through the paper and they’re the longest lasting markers I’ve ever used. Regular Sharpies are too thin (and they do bleed through the paper). Perhaps the worst choice of markers are dry erase markers – they’re not meant for paper. It still baffles me why I see them so often used on a flip chart. They fade quickly on paper and they’re kind of stinky.

2. Make Flip Charts in Advance

Sometimes you just want to create a flip chart in the moment to illustrate a point, but if you can create your flip chart in advance, they just look more attractive. Having some extra time to draw neatly on the paper may sound like a little thing, but the audience can tell when you’ve gone the extra mile to show them you respect their time and care about their experience.

3. Write Big on Your Flip Chart!

A companion tip for writing big is to not think you have to write everything on the flip chart. Keep your text to keywords.

4. Alternate Colors

When you’re making lists, it’s helpful to use visual cues to distinguish between points. Alternating colors for each point allows learners to easily distinguish where one idea ends and another begins.

Drawing on Flip Charts

5. Use Imagery on Flip Charts

Flip charts don’t need to be all words. Draw imagery that your learners can connect to your key points and help them remember your content.

6. Find Things to Trace

If you’re anything like I am, your circles come out more like oblate spheroids. I’ve found the secret to a good, big circle is the lip of a garbage can! Finding things to trace can help your flip charts look more clean and professional.

7. When all else fails, find someone who likes to draw.

Sometimes people are just intimidated by a flip chart. “But I’m not an artist,” they’ll say. If none of these other eight tips are helpful, then there’s no shame in finding someone else – a colleague, an offspring – who really enjoys arts and crafts and markers and paper.

Advanced Flip Chart Tips

8. Write Talking Points in Pencil

Need some help remembering a key point you just have to make? Write some of your most important talking points lightly, in pencil, on your flip chart and stand next to the flip chart as you speak.

9. Make Dynamic Flip Charts

This idea didn’t pop into my mind until I was in a meeting in which my colleague, Jeremy Shuman, pulled out some flip chart magic. I got so excited I couldn’t concentrate on what he was explaining because I’d never seen flip chart used like this. He hid small pieces of flip chart behind his main sheet, and used pull tabs to make new information appear when he began a new point.

What’s missing from this list? I’d love to read about how you make flip charts for your training sessions. Tell us in the comment section!