Presentation Secrets: Do What you Never Thought Possible With Your Presentations

WORKING WITH PICTURES

The biggest problem with pictures is the same as with fonts: People use them for decoration rather than for illustration. Suppose you have a lot of text about some topic (say, computers). Why not add a tiny picture of a computer to the side? Here's a perfectly good reason why not; such an image introduces a distraction and accomplishes nothing. It can probably work in a children's book where the illustrator has time and skills to produce a beautiful illustration and the reader has time to appreciate it. It doesn't quite work for presentations, where neither condition is met. If you want to give the audience a quick hint about the slide, don't use photos or clipart. Instead, use simple pictograms without any backgrounds.

Sizing Your Pictures

Always remember that the key element of any slide that contains a picture is the picture, not the text. Thus, the picture should be sufficiently large. Making your picture small is like putting the most important information in small print in hopes that nobody will notice it. It's not what you are trying to accomplish, so make your pictures sufficiently big, preferably full screen. If your picture becomes pixilated, replace it.

Use www.tineye.com to find the larger version or just find a similar image.

Pixilated images are painful to look at. They produce an emotional response which is directly opposite from what are you ...