Finding "Evocative Media"

Joyce Wycoff has posted some links to sources of Creative Commons lincensed photos.

This reminded me of Cliff Atkinson's beyond bullets post on presentation design entitled Evocative Media.

I've written frequently about using graphics to create more effective information design and the importance of information design to knowledge management activities. How well we access, filter, and process information, and then how effectively we share our knowledge depends greatly on how well we employ information design principles.

If we can agree that information graphics enhance commuication for many learners (no longer a debatable point, I hope), then where do we get them?

Many times, the images, tables, charts, maps are already there in the information we need to summarize, clarify, or interpret. Often we can simply scan, or copy, and paste them into our report, e-mail, presentation, etc.

Other times we need to extract the critical information and design an information graphic to present it most effectively. This means learning a basic graphics program, or adding a designer to the team.

Reminder: DO NOT use the built-in, auto-content wizards in Word, PowerPoint, Excel, etc. They generate charts, table, and graphs that more often distort or obscure the critical information than they promote clarity.

But other times we need to illustrate a point with one of those evocative images Cliff talks about. And as Joyce points out, photographs work much better than clip art in most cases.

(Note: Lightning strike image used under the Creative Commons "by attribution" license from Lars Lentz's LightningVolt Image Gallery, www.lightningvolt.com).

Joyce's post links to several sources of free, licensed photos. From the Creative Commons "Get Content" page you can find others. You can also find sources of movie clips (e.g. the Prelinger Archives and the Common Content Movie Catalog) that will really help make your next presentation memorable.