Sam Thatte

Smart or Dumb Images? You decide!

Stickonomics tip #1

Please comment below after you watch the video. I would like to hear from you so I know what problems you see with presentations that I can help solve in the future!

What follows is the transcript from the video. That is for Google and Bing. Not for you. Unless you are using Netscape Navigator. If you are, you probably don’t see the video. So go ahead and read!

So, what are smart & dumb images? When you add images to your slides, they have a specific job to do. Their specific job is to introduce emotion in your mind to drive home a point. Smart images do that very well but dumb images add nothing to the quality of the communication.

For example, take a look at this slide. Do you think that this image enhances the text? Well there is a good way to find out. Just take the palm of your hand and cover the image. Do you feel a difference. I sure didn’t!

Now let’s take a look at another image in place of this one. Go ahead, cover the image up with your hand and see what emotions you feel. Now see if this text has the same intensity that you felt before you covered the image? I certainly trusted the presenter more with this image present!

Smart images are great to add to your presentation but if you cannot find an appropriate smart image, it is better to use no image at all!

I would much rather see this text on a slide than see a cheesy photo of cheesy businessmen shaking their cheesy hands!

Well, I must admit that I too have used some of these cliched images simply because it was what the client requested and it was easy. So how do we as presentation designers reverse this trend that has flooded the business world? We have a few options; We can take our own photos, hire a reasonably priced photographer, or simply  take care when selecting stock images to make sure we don’t use images that have already been downloaded thousands of times before.
Well, there you have it! To summarize what we learned today is that it is really important to use smart images in your presentations and the one way to test whether an image is smart or dumb, just do a palm test!

So always use smart images in your presentations. Because if you don’t, well you might look… How shall I say it, not so smart!

Please comment below to let me know what part of this video you enjoyed most and what topics would you like me to cover in the future! Thanks for visiting!