“The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter–it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.“
-Mark Twain
It’s the same with images. When you have limited time or resources to prepare your presentation slides, there is always pressure to accept an image as “almost right”. But close enough isn’t always close enough. Images that seem on the surface to illustrate a point you are trying to make, can subtly undermine your message.
I was looking for an image, recently, to illustrate the idea of carrying the audience along with the force of your argument and delivery. The visual metaphor I wanted to use was of the way a surfer is carried by a wave. I went to iStockphoto.com to search for a suitable image and found hundreds of photos of surfers. Many of them were beautiful images and would have made attention grabbing visuals, but they just didn’t feel right. It took me a minute to figure out why.
I realized that there were several visual metaphors in them that were working against the argument I was trying to make. In some of the photos, the surfer was doing some kind of cutback or active maneuver that negated the idea of being carried effortlessly along with the message.
Some implied a sort of lateral movement, rather than forward progress. In others, the top of the wave looked like it was about to crash down on the surfer. That was not the image I wanted. Obviously, wipeouts were bad. I’ve given enough of that kind of presentation.
In some of the photos, the wave was very choppy or irregular, which worked against the idea of a well-organized and compelling argument, or the wind was driving spray from the top of it, indicating some kind of resistance. In some, the wave was just too small to illustrate the idea of a powerful argument. Even too big was a problem. I didn’t want the surfer, or by extension, those in the audience, to seem overwhelmed.
All of this is only logical in hindsight. Initially, it was just the feeling that I got from the photos that set off alarm bells. That’s the reaction your audience is going to have if you undercut your own argument with poorly selected visuals. Instead of being carried along by the force of your presentation, half of their brains are going to be going in a different direction.
It’s tough enough to get your message across without working against yourself.
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There’s another example of an almost right image in another blog post by John Zimmer that by coincidence appeared on the same day as this one of yours. I revised his here:
http://joyfulpublicspeaking.blogspot.com/2011/02/effort-and-asymptote.html
Actually, Richard, that graphic also describes the curve of how appropriate an image is for the purpose it is intended to illustrate. It’s almost impossible to find the perfect image, but you’d better be as far up that curve as you can get, or you’re just going to be undermining your message.