One of the best things I have seen over the last twelve months is the increasing use of images and the decreasing use of text in presentation slides.
Unfortunately, this has led to considerable misuse of images and in particular images that are simply not relevant to the subject of the words. Often presenters use images of their favourite sports star to illustrate the fighting spirit needed to increase sales. Sadly, the audience have no idea who the sports star is or how being like him or her will help increase sales.
Other times I have seen images of cute animals with the words “teamwork” plastered over the top of it. To most people cute animals are just not associated with ‘teamwork’
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When using images in your presentation slides they really need to be relevant to the topic you are talking about. They also need to be easily understood by your audience. Yuna Kim is a famous figure skater in Korea. But figure skating is not a famous sport on a global scale. So using an image of Yuna Kim in a presentation to a group of business people from Australia, for example, is not going to work. Your Australian audience will not know who she is. Likewise, JiSung Park may be famous in Korea and certain parts of Manchester. But as football is not a big sport in the US or Canada, images of him are not going to resonate in a presentation to a US or Canadian audience.
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You also need to avoid the use of ‘cliched’ images. These are images that have been used over and over again and have become boring. An image of two businessmen shaking hands for example to show partnership, or one of a group of people from different ethnic backgrounds to show that your company is a global company. These have been used too many times and are very boring.
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So, choose your images carefully. Make sure they are relevant to the subject you are trying to illustrate, try to use only one image per slide and make sure that whatever images you do use, your audience are going to know what it is about.
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