A client of mine needed images of people to make his presentation come alive. But he couldn’t find the diversity he needed. And he’s in the field of education, which has many more females than males. I came up with 4 ways to find the people images you need.
Take your own photos
Go around your office and ask people if you can photograph them. That way, you’ll get a representative group. Usually, people are happy to oblige, but give them time to spruce themselves up!
Use silhouettes
Silhouettes are great when you don’t want too much detail. In this way, the audience can imagine the diversity.
Geetesh Bajaj at Indezine.com has a great selection of silhouettes.
Use the search box on Geetesh’s website to search for “silhouette” and you’ll find more. This is a great resource!
Create icons
You can create your own modern icons that can be gender and color neutral. I have a blog post showing one idea here.
Buy photos
If you’re willing to spend some money, you can usually find a wide range of photos that suit your purposes. I like Stock Unlimited for their great selection and reasonable prices.
What techniques have you used to get the people images you want? Leave a comment!
Thank you Ellen — great post! And on Indezine, we now have a Silhouettes page which links to all silhouettes on our site: http://www.indezine.com/bank/silhouettes/
Fantastic ideas. Loved the related article on how to create iconic people. It brought to mind a 5th option–why not draw your own icon?
Hi Ellen,
I’ve been using another technique to illustrate sometimes difficult activities or concepts. Recently I needed images to illustrate giving feedback as part of performance management. I had a number of photos from a leadership program where individuals did a lot of one-on-one role playing. I applied different artistic effects to the images which gave me the effect I wanted – think of it as an artistic silhouette. As a result, the individuals in the photos were not identifiable, but the one-on-one situation did a good job of illustrating one person giving feedback to another.
Michael
Eugenia, Yes drawing your own icon is great if you feel you can. I have 2 tips that might help:
http://ellenfinkelstein.com/pptblog/create-your-own-graphics-and-icons-for-powerpoint-part-ii-creating-line-art-from-scratch/
http://ellenfinkelstein.com/pptblog/add-your-own-sketch-to-a-slide/
Is one of these what you meant?
Michael, that’s a fantastic idea. Take a photo and use the artistic effects or color effects to change it to a silhouette or something similar. You can reduce contrast and brightness, for example.