Picture Power

It’s no secret beautiful pictures can improve the impact of your slides, but a lot of people don’t know where to find them.

Clip Art looks like it still belongs in the early-1990s, and Google’s Image Search rarely yields the high quality images we’re looking for. Not to mention, there are legal issues with reusing copyrighted images found in the random tubes of the internet.

If you’ve never heard the term, “Stock Photography” refers to photos that are not taken for a specific client, but instead are made available for use by any client for any purpose. “Royalty Free”, a phrase you’ll often hear around stock photos, just means the image can be used an unlimited amount of times in certain media without paying royalties to the photographer.

Historically, stock photo catalogs were only available to professional media and design firms. The images were priced out of reach of ordinary people.

Fortunately, the internet has leveled this playing field and in the past few years several stock photo resources have sprouted up aimed at both professionals and consumers alike.

Where to get ‘em?

By popular request, I’d like to share with you some of my favorite places to get good quality stock photos. (Note: When I use the word “quality” in this context, I’m referring to both the resolution and the overall attractiveness of the images.)

stock.xchng – (Free – Mixed Quality) When budget is an issue but you want good quality images, this is the place to go. Stock.xchng is, by far, the best free stock photo resource I know of. Their image tagging could be better, but on the whole their search tool works very well. Not all the images in their library are spectacular, but there are enough gems mixed in to make searching around worthwhile. There is also a for-pay sister version of the site (stock.xpert), which boasts higher quality photos (as well as illustrations) for very reasonable prices (about $1-$10 per image).

iStockphoto – (Inexpensive – High Quality) Out of all the stock photo resources on the web, this one is my favorite. iStockphoto has a gigantic library of photos to choose from (their library also includes illustrations and videos). The site enforces strict guidelines for the quality of images that can be submitted, so most of images come from professional photographers and designers. The entire library is very well tagged, so when you perform a search you almost always get the results you want on the first try. While the images aren’t free, they are very reasonably priced (about $1-$10 per picture). It’s a small price to pay for the impact and professionalism such high quality images will add to your presentation. Definitely check this one out.

Getty Images – (Expensive, Best Quality) Getty is the top dog when it comes to stock photography. It may be expensive, but when you have the budget or just need that one perfect picture, there’s no better place to go. Getty is the image resource for countless top-notch media and design firms around the world.

Of course, there are many more stock photo resources out there. These are just a few of my favorites that you may also find useful when making your next presentation. If you have a favorite photo resource I did not mention, go ahead and leave a note about it in the comments.

Let’s shift gears now and talk about design. Well-designed slides alone don’t make a presentation great, but they certainly don’t hurt either.

Little Designers

Design is a tricky topic to address because people tend to see design as a profession, something only “designers” do. In the same way that too many people think they can’t be creative, too many people think they can’t design things.

When we’re little kids we spend hours and hours painting pictures. We are born as little designers. We draw the things we see, the things we think about. We don’t worry about critics or cynics. We don’t care what others might think if we express ourselves, if we show our feelings. As little kids the world is full of new things. We notice a lot of little nuances, so many we can’t help but express the world we see. Yet somehow this creative drive gets sucked out of us as we grow up. We get used to the things in the world and start to feel self-conscious about expressing ourselves. We forget we were once little designers. We forget what we can do.

The first step to good design is good observation.

Slowing down just a little bit, paying attention to the world and noticing the nuances that make things interesting is the best design education you can get. Design is all over the place.

A Photography Lesson

There’s a great design tip photographers use that slide designers can learn from. It’s called the “Rule of Thirds.” (I’m normally not a big fan of “rules” in this context, so ignore what it’s called and think of it as a principle. “Rules” are hard boundaries of what you should and shouldn’t do. “Principles” are sails that guide you in the direction you’d like to go.)

You can set two photos of the same object side by side and see two very different images. Next time you see a photo you like, pause a moment and ask yourself why you like it.

The “Rule of Thirds” has to do with framing your shot, which is to say it has to do with where you line up the things in your photo.

Imagine drawing two vertical and two horizontal lines across your image, dividing it into thirds each way (like a grid with nine boxes). The idea is to line up the important elements of your photo (the horizon, the person’s eyes, etc) with these lines and their intersections, instead of lining them up with the exact center of the image as we’re inclined to do.

It isn’t exactly clear why (it has to do with the Golden Ratio), but images lined up on the thirds tend to look much more natural and appealing. Something about them is more interesting.

Applying it to Slide Design

Once you know about the Rule of Thirds you’ll see it being used all over the place. Magazines and other print media regularly use it for their layouts. Cinematographers line up movie scenes along the thirds all the time. Television directors do the same thing (notice where the news anchor sits and where the graphic lines up in the upper corner).

The Rule of Thirds can make your PowerPoint slides look a lot better too. Our first impulse is usually to place objects on the horizontal and vertical centers of our slide. Instead, next time you’re making a presentation try aligning your text boxes and images on the thirds. It will often lead to a less typical and more interesting looking slide that’s more appealing to an audience.

Using grid lines of any kind in your slide design also adds a consistency to your slides that makes the whole presentation look more polished and professional.

The Rule of Thirds is one of those great design tips that comes from nature, so it can be picked up intuitively. It resonates well with human perception and can make your slides look a lot more appealing. It’s a design tip that’s simple to implement and yields big results, so give it a try in your next presentation.