Cutting design & graphics costs

After a recent presentation, an audience member approached me and wanted to talk about how much her company was spending on graphics with a design firm. It seems that the design firm charges a fee every time a minor change is made. The graphic for the slide is a single image, so any minor change needs to go through the design firm, costing a significant fee, no matter how small the change. She was asking me if there is a better way. I think there is.

When you are contracting for some graphics to be designed for your slides, make sure you select a design or graphics firm who is willing to design the graphics in a way that you can make minor changes yourself or re-use parts on other slides. Ask them to provide the finished graphics as individual images grouped into the completed graphic. That way, if you need to make a minor change, you can ungroup the individual elements, make the change, and re-group them.

Another way to create professional graphics is to do them yourself using high-quality vector images. Combine individual elements and you can create the exact graphic you need. For example, you can combine a truck graphic and a factory graphic with one of a retail store to show the movement of goods through the process in your firm. Where do you get these vector images? I’d start with istockphoto.com and search for your keywords while specifying that the results should be vector images. I am using some vector images in my own presentations that I got from istockphoto.

Can you use professional graphics and not break the bank? Yes you can. Create them yourself or leverage the graphics you have created by a design firm.