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About this lesson

In this lesson, we'll look at a number of free resources for high-quality images, icons and videos for use in presentations. We'll also discuss where to go for inspiration when it comes to slide layouts, use of color, iconography, and images.

Exercise files

Download the ‘before’ and ‘after’ PowerPoint presentations from the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.

2.02 resources-and-inspiration - Exercise.docx
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Quick reference

Resources and Inspiration

Gone are the days when you could just open up the internet, download an image, an icon or a video and use them freely in PowerPoint presentations. These days, we need to be a bit more resourceful.

When to use

Use the free resource sites whenever you are looking for an image, icon, video, or template to use in your presentation. Even if you just need a daily dose of design inspiration or somthing to get the little grey cells firing, this collection of free resources are invaluable.

Instructions

Visual elements bring PowerPoint presentations to life. Preferable to slides full of text, images, videos, icons and templates help your audience understand the story you are trying to tell.

It's important to have a handful of free resource sites that provide high-quality imagery and iconography without the worry of breaching copyright.

There are many free sites out there on the web, but these are the ones I find myself going to frequently.

High-quality images and motion video

Pexels
  • Open a web browser and go to www.pexels.com.
  • Click in the search bar and type in the name of the image you are looking for.
  • Select an image and then click on the green Free download button in the top right-hand corner.
  • Images will be downloaded to your downloads folder on your PC or whichever folder you have set up to recieve downloaded files.
Unsplash
  • Open a web browser and go to www.unsplash.com.
  • Click in the search bar and type in the name of the image you are looking for.
  • Select an image and then click on the green Free download button in the top right-hand corner.
  • Images will be downloaded to your downloads folder on your PC or whichever folder you have set up to recieve downloaded files.

Iconography

The Noun Project

The Noun Project offers free icons and a subscription service. Both free and paid members have access to all the icons. As a free member, you must give credit to the icon's designer when you use their icon. Paid members get unlimited royalty-free licences (no need to attribute) and can download icons in any color.

A yearly subscription to The Noun Project costs $39.99.

  • Open a web browser and go to www.thenounproject.com.
  • Click in the search bar and type in the name of the icon you are looking for.
  • Select an an icon and choose if you want to download the icon in PNG or SVG format (paid members only).
  • Images will be downloaded to your downloads folder on your PC or whichever folder you have set up to recieve downloaded files.

Templates

PowerPoint contains many in-built templates that are free to use. However, some of these templates are basic and a bit dated in their look and feel. There are many websites offering free PowerPoint templates with varying degrees of modernity but a site I find myself using frequently is Slides Carnival.

Slides Carnival has a large selection of templates for both PowerPoint and Google Slides. They also have some really cool, customizable infographics with new content being added weekly.

  • Open a web browser and go to www.slidescarnival.com.
  • Use the menu at the top to filter for templates that interest you. You can view all templates, filter by category or filter by color.
  • Select a template and click Go to preview and download.

Inspiration and Design Ideas

Not everyone is a natural designer. If you struggle to come up with ideas for slide designs and find yourself starting at a blank presentation for 30 minutes, then it's a good idea to seek some inspiration!

Pinterest is a treasure-trove of inspo and motivation when it comes to slick, modern looking PowerPoint templates and designs.

  • Open a web browser and go to www.pinterest.com.
  • In the search bar at the top type in PowerPoint Design or PowerPoint Templates or PowerPoint Ideas.
  • Click on an image to see a preview or go to the linked website to view the slides.

Hints & tips

  • Pinterest is mainly for inspiration and ideas. Many of the slide decks you will find will probably be templates that come at a cost. However, looking is free and whilst its great to be inspired by a design, try not to copy anything you find too closely. Take the idea and adapt it. Use your own images, colors, fonts and icons.
  • Pexels and Unsplash also contain a librabry of free videos that are fantastic to use as backgrounds in PowerPoint.
  • If you are required to attribute the author of an icon or an image, create an extra slide at the end of your presentation for credits. This keeps it off of the main slide but still fulfills the attributation requirements.
  • Create a folder in the bookmarks bar of your browser called PPT Design and add these sites to it for easy access.
Login to download
  • 00:04 Now before we dive into creating our first PowerPoint presentation, which is very
  • 00:10 exciting, it is important for you to know where you can go for some free resources.
  • 00:16 So I'm going to show you all of the resources that I use for images, icons,
  • 00:20 videos, things like that.
  • 00:23 Because contrary to popular belief, if you're putting together a PowerPoint
  • 00:27 presentation and you want a nice image in the background, you can't really just jump
  • 00:31 onto Google, search for the image, and then use whatever you like on there.
  • 00:35 Most images these days have some kind of copyright or license attached to them.
  • 00:39 And you do have to be a little bit careful when you're using them in personal or
  • 00:43 commercial projects.
  • 00:45 So I like to just avoid that whole minefield altogether and
  • 00:49 go somewhere where I know I have images that I can use.
  • 00:53 So let me show you a few of my favorites.
  • 00:56 Now the first website, I always go to, and this is if I'm looking for
  • 01:00 inspiration if I want some ideas as to different layouts,
  • 01:04 if I want to see what other people are designing or what's new,
  • 01:08 what's modern, a lot of the time I'll jump on to Pinterest.
  • 01:12 And this may seem a little bit of a strange site, but believe it or not,
  • 01:16 there are 1000s of PowerPoint templates and design ideas on Pinterest.
  • 01:21 So fire up a web browser and go to pinterest.co.uk or.com if
  • 01:25 you're in the US, and from the search bar I'm just going to search for
  • 01:30 let's say PowerPoint design ideas and hit Enter.
  • 01:35 And look what that pulls back.
  • 01:36 We have hundreds of these on here.
  • 01:38 And all of these will link through to different sites, but
  • 01:42 the way that I like to use this is I just like to click on them and
  • 01:45 just take a look at the way these slides are designed.
  • 01:49 If you want to,
  • 01:50 you can click through to the original site that this came from to get a closer look.
  • 01:54 But as I said, if I'm just looking for a little bit of inspiration,
  • 01:58 I can come onto here and I can see all different slide layouts.
  • 02:01 And then I can go away and maybe try and recreate these in my own style.
  • 02:06 And I always use these just as a guide, so I won't directly copy them,
  • 02:10 but I might do something that looks reasonably similar.
  • 02:13 But I'll obviously be using different images, different icons, different texts,
  • 02:17 so on and so forth.
  • 02:18 So Pinterest in general is where I will come if I'm looking for
  • 02:22 a dash of inspiration.
  • 02:23 Then when it comes to images in my presentation I
  • 02:26 have two different websites that I like to use.
  • 02:30 The first one is a site called pexels.com.
  • 02:33 Now you don't necessarily have to join this site, it is completely free.
  • 02:37 And it's very user friendly as well.
  • 02:39 So when you go onto the website, you can just search for
  • 02:42 the image that you're looking for and it will pull back a whole bunch of royalty
  • 02:47 free super high quality images that you can download.
  • 02:50 So for example, if I was looking for a landscape background, I just type it in,
  • 02:55 hit Enter, and I'm presented with all of the images that match that keyword.
  • 03:00 If I want to download one of these images, it's a very simple process.
  • 03:04 I just need to click on the image and
  • 03:06 in the top corner we have a free download button.
  • 03:09 When you download it that's going to go into the Downloads folder on your PC.
  • 03:14 And you can just pick it up from within PowerPoint from there.
  • 03:17 The other website I use is very similar in many ways.
  • 03:20 It's called Unsplash.
  • 03:22 And it looks pretty much very similar to Pexels.
  • 03:26 So if we do the same search in here, I'm going to search for
  • 03:29 landscape and hit Enter.
  • 03:30 Again, we get a whole bunch of really high quality images to use.
  • 03:35 And if I click on them, I have the download free button at the top, and
  • 03:39 I can even choose what size I want to download this photo in.
  • 03:42 So both of those websites are fantastic for free images.
  • 03:46 Now, when it comes to icons PowerPoint has its own icon library.
  • 03:51 So quite often I'll find the icon that I'm looking for from within there.
  • 03:55 But if I want a much wider range of icons, I always go to the noun project.
  • 04:02 Now you can download free icons from here.
  • 04:04 But there are some limitations.
  • 04:07 For example,
  • 04:07 one of the big limitations is that you can't change the color of the icon.
  • 04:12 So the icons normally are black on this website and
  • 04:14 it just means that you can't change it to another color.
  • 04:18 However, if you pay for the paid version of the noun project,
  • 04:22 then you can change the color of those icons and download as many as you like.
  • 04:26 Now the paid version is very inexpensive.
  • 04:28 It's roughly $40 a year.
  • 04:30 So if you do a lot of PowerPoint design,
  • 04:32 it's probably going to be worth your time investing in a noun project subscription.
  • 04:37 But let me just show you how this works.
  • 04:39 Again, we have a very simple search facility.
  • 04:42 So if I was looking for an icon related to a chart, I just type it in,
  • 04:45 hit Enter, and it pulls back all of these different icons.
  • 04:49 Choose your icon by clicking on it and
  • 04:52 then you have a choice of downloading as a PNG file or an SVG file.
  • 04:56 Once again, those will download to your local drives and
  • 04:59 you can then pick them up from with inside PowerPoint.
  • 05:02 And finally, templates.
  • 05:04 If I'm looking for templates for PowerPoint, more
  • 05:07 often than not the ones that are inbuilt into PowerPoint do a really good job.
  • 05:12 But another website that I like to use is Slides Carnival.
  • 05:16 So you'll find 1000s and 1000s of different PowerPoint templates in here.
  • 05:20 Now most of the time I find that the inbuilt templates in PowerPoint normally
  • 05:25 do the job for me.
  • 05:27 But if I want to branch out a little bad or see a wider selection,
  • 05:31 I quite often will come on to Slides Carnival,
  • 05:34 all of the templates on here are free and you can download as many as you like.
  • 05:39 All of the templates are divided down into different categories to make them super
  • 05:44 easy to search form.
  • 05:45 And once again, it's just a case of finding one that takes your fancy and
  • 05:49 then you can preview it and then download.
  • 05:52 So those are the free resources that I use.
  • 05:55 There's many more out there, but these are the ones that I'm going to be using
  • 05:58 throughout the balance of this course.
  • 06:00 So if you want to, now is a really great time to go to those different websites and
  • 06:04 just bookmark them in your browser so that they're easy for you to get to.
  • 06:09 That's it for now.
  • 06:10 I will see you in the next lesson.

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