1. Quality. Search engines will scour the internet for any images they can find which may be related to your enquiry. These will generally have been optimised to fit onto a web page. That is, they will be low resolution 'thumbnail' images specifically designed to be viewed on a small monitor.

When you blow that image up to fit on a Powerpoint slide, you'll find yourself with something blocky and distinctly amateurish which will detract from the information you're presenting.

2. Copyright. Google Image searches will list *any* images it can find. As such, they are likely to contain a lot of copyrighted material which you have no right to lift and use in your presentation. It only takes one email of your slides to an interested audience member and they could easily end up in the public domain, with or without your knowledge. If those slides contain copyrighted images, you could find yourself in hot water.

Even if you vow never to email your slides to anyone, there's no sense in getting in bad habits you'll just have to undo later. Learning how to use images properly gives you the skill you'll need for a publication or big conference presentation.

3. Ditch Google, get Creative. Images under Creative Commons (CC) licence are your friends. There are a variety of licences under the CC umbrella, but as long as you credit the image creator (generally, the photographer) and aren't planning to do any major re-editing of the original, you'll be OK to re-use any images with a CC licence.

Where to find them? Flickr has a huge range of images, many of which are Creative Commons. A good way to search them is through the Compfight search engine. Just click on 'creative commons' in the sidebar, enter your search term and away you go. Clicking an image takes you to its Flickr page:

Check the image licence (1, above) - it's summarised on the page but you can get more details by clicking through. This one says you are free to copy and transmit the work as long as you attribute the creator of the image, don't use it for commercial benefit and agree not to alter it.

Then move up to 'actions' and click on 'view all sizes' (2):

Then just download (4) and paste it into your Powerpoint with some text crediting the image. For this image I would suggest: Flickr user 'mobile disco': "I Love Peckham post-its" (there's no real name given for this user, if there is one, use that instead).

Ta-da! You have a high quality, correctly licensed image from the very creative Flickr community, rather than the lo-res, copyrighted fare of Google Images.

Further reading:

11 ways to use your image poorly - classic Presentation Zen post on the best way to use your image in a slide (hint: *fill* the screen).

Easy-peasy guide to crediting images - great flowchart to help you check you're doing it right.

Where can you find good images? - more Presentation Zen goodness, list of alternative sites for good, roylaty-free images.

Over the last couple of weeks we've concentrated on data visualisation, emphasising the importance of clear, unfussy methods which don't obscure the story of the data. A good figure can be very powerful, but may not be enough on its own to convey a message. In particular, if you are giving a presentation in person, I suggest that projecting a succession of figures onto a screen - no matter how well put together they are - is not the best way to get your point across.

Memorable images are key in giving a good presentation - even if you have 10 killer figures that you'd like to present to your audience, run through them all on Powerpoint and their power will quickly wither away to naught as your audience suffers information overload. They spend so much time squinting at the screen, it really doesn't matter what you're saying as they've stopped listening.

A better idea: select the very best two or three figures which support your argument and mix them up with some visual aids which, while not carrying the same intellectual weight as your carefully compiled data, are just as important in making sure your ideas stick in the mind of your audience.

Let's say you're giving a presentation on those accused of offences during the recent English riots. It would be very easy to put together a series of figures cutting the data in various ways, as the Guardian have done here. Without commenting on the attributes of these particular figures, showing too many of them in a presentation risks diluting their power through loss of context.

There is an argument that sticking to plain figures serve a purpose in taking the political heat out of an issue, and refocusing on the evidence. There is some truth in that, but I would argue that researchers often go too far the other way and forget that after looking at umpteen tables and figures, it's all too easy to forget what we were talking about in the first place.

The riots are clearly a politically charged issue; images should be chosen with care. They might convey a message of community recovery such as the one above, or could emphasise lawlessness, as with this powerful but more conventional image from Greece in 2008 (mouseover both images for credits):

Garr Reynolds (Presentation Zen author and Thunderfly pin-up) puts it well:

Statistics...are just abstractions. But when we hear the story amplified by compelling photography...the issue becomes concrete.

As long as the image is a good fit with your evidence, then it provides a crucial hook for your audience, reminding them of what the data contained in your carefully crafted figure means in the 'real world'.

Next week, we'll look at how to quickly find high quality images that can be reproduced in your presentation or report. For now, I'd love to hear your views on using images in conjunction with the traditional academic figure. Do you think they help make an argument? Or does using images like those above risk overshadowing the research data?

Glad I took the risk of travelling through the snow down to London yesterday to catch Garr Reynolds of Presentation Zen fame speaking at the Apple Store on Regent St.

Having watched and read a lot of Garr’s work, I was familiar with some of what he talked about, but there were plenty of new angles which helped me think afresh about how to present. I won’t go over the whole presentation here, as I couldn’t do it justice. Instead I’ll pick out just one really useful metaphor which will hopefully help me cure one of my main presentation weaknesses: preparation time.

I can procrastinate with the best of them, so it was my usual last minute rush to prepare a new lecture I was giving to postgraduates last week. The subject, interpretive policy analysis, was known to me (my choice, in fact) but there’s still a lot of work to be done working out structure, what to include and what to leave out, even before considering any slides. Fact is, I suffer from more than my fair share of the lizard brain.

In discussing preparation, Garr used the metaphor of the tough, sealed PVC box that headphones, remotes etc so often come packaged in which leads to the overwhelming frustration ably demonstrated above by Larry David.

So why do the companies package them that way? Because it’s easy. Or more accurately, it was the easiest thing for *them* to do. If they’d thought very much about their audience (customers), then the company would have realised that using that packaging would probably hack them off.

It’s easy to underprepare for a presentation. A common way round this is just to tell an audience as much as you know about a subject in the allotted time, especially when you’re immersed in it. That may be easy, but it’s not good for your audience who are subjected to a stream of information displayed on over-stuffed bullet slides. Without a clear structure or, as Garr described it, a ‘presentation arc’ (i.e. moving *from* one idea at the beginning *to* another idea at the end), your audience will either be seething like Larry David or dropping off from yet another case of Death By Powerpoint.

Creativity involves a lot of editing; sometimes it’s painful but removing some of that material you’ve spent hours slaving over is a necessary part of producing clarity in the finished product. I know this from experience but that doesn’t stop it being difficult work which is all too easily put off until the last minute.  That’s OK when it doesn’t affect anyone but yourself but when it comes to presentations, you risk wasting not only your time but that of your audience too, leaving yourself with a room full of Larrys.

Of course to get as good as Garr requires a lot of work but, as he said last night, the key is to focus on the next step and maintain your ‘kaizen’. For me, the next step is to make more time for preparation and sure no Larrys creep into my next presentation.