Category Archives: Imagery

Where to Find Logos

Recently I discussed solutions for finding imagery. Now let’s talk logos.

One of my personal pet peeves is seeing things like this…

There are at least 5 major things wrong with the above logo. Can you spot them?

I’m a bit of a stickler for using crisp, current logos. I kind of see it like making sure you spell your client’s name correctly. But it can be a real challenge, even for professional designers, to get your hands on real logo files. 

If you are working with a graphic designer, or if you’re handy with Adobe Illustrator, your first stop should be brandsoftheworld.com where you can find the vast majority of brand logos in vector format. You can also try EPSLogos.net, logotypes.ru and logotypes101.

Once you obtain the EPS logo file, you want to convert (or have your designer convert) it to either a .PNG or .WMF format. Why not a JPEG? a JPEG has a tendency to degrade in quality as a file is saved, resaved and compressed. Additionally, a JPEG cannot be transparent the way a .PNG can (and often should) be. Transparency means that a logo can be “cut out” and placed over any background, and you should always try to save logos with transparency to give you the most flexibility.

The .WMF format is even more preferable in many cases as it is a Windows vector format that can be inserted into Microsoft applications. A .WMF can be exported from Adobe Illustrator and results in an image file that is tiny in size, infinitely scalable and which will never degrade as a file is compressed and saved. Additionally, once brought into PowerPoint or Word, it can actually be recolored and manipulated just like any other shape created natively in those programs. The one negative to a .WMF is that the curves it creates can be a little rough, and this may be apparent if the logo is used at a large size on the page. 

So, what do you do if you don’t have access to professional designers or software? While you always want to visit the brand’s website to confirm their current logo, you want to avoid copying their logo from the page’s header where it probably has been placed over an awkward background and might have an unnecessary tagline. (Additionally, you could be bringing over to PPT link or other problematic html info that could cause issues in PPT.) Instead, head to Wikipedia where you often can find a .PNG logo for the brand to download to your desktop, then insert into your presentation.
  
If Wikipedia can’t help, your next best bet is a Google image search where you’ll most likely find a decent JPEG of the logo. But again, make sure the logo is current. Other options include scouring the brand’s site for a downloadable logo (try the “media” link) or finding an investor or other presentation from which you might be able to copy the logo. Finally, if you’re presenting to a company and have a contact, just ask them to send you one suitable for a presentation. Don’t be embarrassed.

Sometimes, a good version of a logo just isn’t possible to find (although I seem to have a knack for finding them by scouring for and then extracting from PDF documents). Pharmaceutical logos are notoriously hard to find, owing to fears of counterfeiting.

But just as someone’s name is most precious to them (see Dale Carnegie…), so too a company’s logo is something to be treated with care. Especially if you want their business.

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Categories: Imagery.

Using Creative Commons Imagery

More and more people are coming to accept the “less text, more imagery” philosophy of presenting information, but finding quality imagery remains a challenge–often a financial one.

Below, I’ve listed a number of pay and free sites for imagery, but lately I’ve been seeking out imagery available under Creative Commons licenses. Wikipedia can give you a good definition, but in a nutshell, CC imagery is put up on the web by amateur and (sometimes) professional photographers with varying usage licenses that most often allow anyone to use the image if accompanied by attribution and prohibits commercial usage (they just don’t want you making money off their work.)

Flickr and Compfight are the two places I generally go to find CC imagery. On Flickr, you’ll want to do an advanced search and filter for only CC imagery. When you find an image that is CC, it will be accompanied by various symbols indicating the level of usage allowed. Usually, all you have to do is give attribution by listing the image URL or the photographer’s name. I generally place this information on the image hidden in a corner as much as possible.

Yes, you’re going to find a lot of amateur, poor photography in the CC pool, but I’m continually surprised at the quality of some of the photography, and if you look hard enough (especially on Compfight), I think you’ll find some gems, including highly specific pics from events and the like.

Here are a few slides from a recent presentation we created here using mostly CC imagery. Note that this was a print/e-mail deck, hence the small type.

 

Where to Find Imagery

Royalty-free and Rights-Managed
Getty Images (the biggie)
Corbis (the other biggie)
iStockPhoto (one of the best cheaper sites)
Veer 
Jupiter Images (also has a subscription-option)
Masterfile
Dreamstime (cheap)
Fotolia (cheap)
Photocase (cheap)
StockXpert (good and cheap)

Subscription-based Services
Shutterstock 
Creative Express (Getty’s subscription service)
Photospin
Photoshop Tutorials list of free photo sites

Search Aggregators
Fotosearch 
Punchstock

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Categories: Design, Imagery.

My 9 Year Old Niece Gets It. Do You?

My sister recently asked me to help my 9 year old niece with a PowerPoint presentation she had to create for class on U.S. National Parks. No, I didn’t just do it for her, but I did send her some examples of presentations that made use of little text and beautiful full screen imagery. It just kind of seemed natural for her topic…

I didn’t hear anything else until last week when my sister sent me her completed assignment. The email came with two attachments: a PowerPoint presentation and a Word document.

I liked where this was going…

I’m going to give the credit on this to my niece’s teacher for understanding that there shouldn’t be a one size fits all format for delivering information. Too often, that one size is a PowerPoint document, and the in-person, on-screen presentation suffers from too much text and content as does the printed, leave behind that suffers from too little real writing and content.

I know, it’s just easier to make one slide-ument that can be presented, printed, handed out and downloaded. But as Olivia Mitchell says: It’s also easier to break up with your boyfriend by text message. That doesn’t make it right.

Last night someone gave me a spiral bound leave behind from a presentation by an $8 billion dollar hedge fund looking for new investors. It was an inexpensively bound identical copy of what was presented on screen. All my eyes saw were loads of text and information–probably all important and legally necessary, of course. But an $8 billion dollar venture should have created both a professionally printed and designed leave behind (think annual report…) and a professionally designed on screen companion presentation that walks the audience through the digestible highlights of the complete printed piece. And they should have distributed only the printed document. 

I have a client right now that approached us wanting help designing a “PowerPoint.” This is a new health consulting company that was paid a lot of money to do an assessment of a corporation involving research, surveys and analysis. My client had planned on presenting its findings in a PowerPoint deck (which would presumably be distributed). We advised them that while they of course will need an on screen version of their findings to present at their 2 hour client meeting, the real meat of their work needed to be presented much more seriously and professionally. So our primary work is now not a PowerPoint deck, but an 18 page professionally designed and printed report. Again, think annual report… After that is written and completed (we’re helping the client with their content as well), then we’ll focus on creating a matching companion PowerPoint deck to present.

I know it’s more work. But many times 2 distinct formats and documents is what’s needed.

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Categories: Imagery, Reducing Text.
visual training presentation