Picture perfect

For the past week, my life has pretty much been learning Keynote, tinkering with design and searching the Internet for and downloading free stock images to use in my presentations.

I've found some really beautiful stuff, but it is massively time consuming. It's like shopping at Filene's or Marshall's. You have to spend hours rifling through crap to find the few hidden gems. But, oh, what I've found!

Via Raven3K

Via Marcos bh

Via tdnb

They look even better big and in high res. I've found about 60-70 photos I'll be using. Including some of my own. In fact, that's a next step. Make a list of photos I need and take them myself.

I'm feeling really intense pressure to create knockout visuals. The people I've talked to and the stuff I've read say that you shouldn't use templates at all. Not using PowerPoint is a step in the right direction, and I also have tons of slides that are simply a full-frame photo with a headline overlaid.

Seth Godin says no slide should have more than six words and I'd say I'm averaging about three. Watching people read from slides like they're scripts is the absolute worst.

I could pay someone to do all this, but I don't think that's such a wise investment right now. When I start getting paid for speeches is when I'll invest in professional design and high-priced stock photography.

For now it's good to have the control. And I'm learning a lot. Most of all, I'm practicing what I preach (show/don't tell). And the reverse is also true -- the more I practice it, the better equipped I am to preach it.

I'm just really, really tired ...