When I covered the chair with a towel it stopped morphing into frame so much. No matter what background I applied in Zoom (including the wooden background below) my chair kept morphing into the frame! I don’t mind if it’s showing, but I want it to show all the time or not at all. If you have a background in place, and your chair pops in and out of the video frame, and it’s the same color as your hair or clothing, cover the back of the chair so it matches the wall tones.įor example, my chair is black, I’m wearing a black shirt, and I have really dark hair. If you have dark hair and you’re in front of a dark wall or dark chair, same problem. If you have blond hair in a lightly colored room, it’s going to be harder for you to keep your shape separate from the zoom background. Ideally, the subject (you) should stand out from the background (your room). Consider Contrast and Use It to Your Advantageĭo you have mostly light color behind you? Is your hair brown or blond? Is the back of your chair usually visible?Īnswer these questions and consider them in terms of contrast. Here are a few lessons I learned through this process that you can apply to your virtual communication toolkit when choosing virtual backgrounds on Zoom meetings. Here I am stretching during a meeting in front of a mountain. The goal was to see how the Zoom technology might make them morph around the subject in the camera. I wanted to create something consistent in the videos despite all the designers having different things going on behind them, so I started trying out different backgrounds that I found free on Unsplash. These videos may have a thumbnail of a specific designer walking through tutorials, but what appears in the background behind each designer has to be considered. Today, I find myself planning how Duarte-branded videos need to be presented.

It’s usually me sitting on the Game of Thrones iron throne, relaxing in a bowling alley or a cafe. That’s usually when I choose to go silly.

I realized that on certain calls, it made sense to let people into my life and show my “reality” background (where everything is carefully curated.) In this new virtual world, we have to consider how we appear and communicate virtually-like on Zoom meetings-and what that means for how our audience perceives our brand.īy now you’ve probably seen some silly screenshots of things happening in peoples backgrounds while on Zoom meetings: a messy house, weird art, a quasi-dressed partner getting milk in the kitchen… Here at Duarte, we not only teach communication skills, we teach people how to present themselves.

Blue zoom background