Slide inspiration

Slides are visual aides to your speech. If you make speeches regularly or making presentations are important part of your life, you could be wondering how to make the slides more engaging or interesting.

If you are committed to having creative slides- then there is no dearth of ideas. Just look all around you. You would find inspiration just about everywhere!

Let us talk about Photos - looking at professional photos is a great source of inspiration.

Colours

(Sample photo)

They give you ideas about colours – what colour combinations go together. For example: the photo of a house – has green grass, and a brown house. Green and brown are good contrast colours. They are laid against the much lighter background colour of sky blue. So instead of just wondering, you know for sure that these colours go well together. You can readily use these colours as part of your presentation fonts and backgrounds.

Emotions
Green and brown in the photo also seems bright and cheerful. Look at any of the grayscale (black and white) photos. They give you a feeling of timelessness, of seriousness or convey strong emotions.

So what do you do when you want to convey emotions of seriousness? Use black and white images and grayscale slides!

You can easily use the colours in a photo also as part of drawing right emotions from your audience when you make a presentation. If you are familiar with any photo editing software- like Photoshop or even MS Paint- you can open up the photo in that software. This allows you to get the exact colour values using the eye dropper or pick colour tool.

(This slide uses similar colours and placement

as the sample photo above)

Placement

What else can you learn from photo? The great thing about professional photos is that the photographer is trying to get the viewers attention. The same as you – as a presenter - are trying to do. So a photo composition – how the objects in the photo are placed can also give you some great ideas.

In most photos, the main object is rarely at the center of the photo. The photo is primarily composed of horizon or a road stretching and the key object is placed off- center to the right / left. This is because of rules in photography called Rule of 3rds and Golden triangle. Without going into details of these rules, the basic concept is this is as follows:
Amateurs normally photograph with the main object placed right in the center. This is considered ‘visually uninteresting’. An off-center placement draws your eyes towards the object as well as gives an idea of the overall environment.

For example, if you see a photo of a man running, the man would be placed off-center to the right. This gives space for him to run towards the left. If there was no space for him to run to, a person viewing the photo may may feel uneasy, while not being able to correctly pinpoint the problem.

This concept can be used in 2 ways. The first is when editing photos to add to your presentation. The second is when you want to make your presentation layout more interesting. Instead of placing a picture right in the middle you can place it off-center.

Check the example of a photo colour and composition used in a slide above.

These are some ideas we can draw from the colourful world of photography. There are more areas for inspiration like advertisements, movies, product packaging, and web sites. Any such ‘artistic’ effort which tries to catch audience attention and leave behind an impression on its audience can give you creative inputs for your slides. So look around you- inspiration is everywhere

Stand up and Speak for yourself

How many people feel that presentation skills are important?

How important do you think it is? Is it a life changing skill or just so-so important?

Think of how many times you actually need to make a presentation as part of your job… it could be as part of any of the following examples:

In any training, you maybe called to stand up and present your point of view

When there are some new people who have joined the organisation, you are called to introduce your organisation to them.

You need to impart product knowledge or service skills to others

Supposing you are a manager, you have a team and need to motivate them
Assuming that you do not yet have a team, once you do…you need to keep them motivated, knowledgeable and presentable – remember they are going to learn from you

You tell your supervisors about all that you have achieved

There is a new idea or initiative from yourself or your group that needs to be presented and sold to a wider audience

You need to present in a conference or seminar where there are colleagues and peers

Your job role involves making presentations to customers.

In every one of these occasions and many more that are not covered – you are giving your audience a VIEW TO YOU. You are telling them in so many ways – by your gestures, by your content, by the way you carry yourself – who you are and what you know. Your audience forms an impression about your capability based on this.

Standing up and speaking in any forum – is granting you a golden opportunity to tell others something about yourself: to show yourself in the best possible light, to highlight your skills, knowledge and attitude.

Can you imagine what would happen if each one of the people in the audience came to you and sought your personal opinion and tried to judge you? Speaking up – whether you are doing it formally in a seminar or privately with your team - is important. Because it gives you a form to say something about yourself ( without seeming like an advertisement) - it can change your life and career for the better!

I would be interested to know your views on this subject...