Gail's slidedeck is an excellent companion to her book. She has it structured similarly and, of course, she wants people coming to her webinar to be ultimately driven to go buy her book afterward. So, my goal in this slideshow was to give her slides the same look and feel, for some visual recognition that would help make identification of her book easier.
Indeed, Gail had already invested in a redesign of her consulting website to make it look and feel more aligned with her book. Thus the slides needed to have the same colors. She had been using a bright green color, mainly because it was what was preloaded into the slide template from PowerPoint she was using. The template itself wasn’t awful. So I worked in the slide master, where I could manipulate the colors of the triangles in the corner of her slides. That’s where I was able to change it from green to the same golden yellow on her book and website.
Gail had already selected one pretty appropriate picture for the start of her section on Is Consulting Right for Me? The main change I made here was to bleed the large picture so the edges of the picture touch the edges of the slide. I also continued the use of this interesting draft-y font that looks like a pencil drawing. I chose this font because I wanted to express what Gail says: the process of becoming a consultant is a constant work-in-progress. The point of the eStudy is to ask hard questions and leave the audience with a sketch of their consulting business. The font fits perfectly.
The next slide I chose from Gail’s deck was a content slide from the same Is Consulting Right for Me? section. That’s why I carried over a thin slice of the picture on the section starter slide – to visually communicate to the reader that this slide belongs to that section of Gail’s talk. I animated the textboxes to appear one at a time, as she talks. I also applied the draft-y font to key words. But be careful. Too much emphasis is a bad thing.
You’ll also notice here that I deleted her logo. In fact, I removed it from interior slides but applied the full logo, large, on home slide. It should appear on the end slide, too. Between those two places, Gail’s solid content makes her organization memorable (and makes the logo obsolete).
Gail’s question breaks are designated visually with this slide. Question breaks aren’t necessarily the time to wow people with awesome visuals because we want them thinking and reflecting and coming up with interesting things to ask. Still, some visual inspiration and branding is appropriate. In this particular project (as with many of yours, I’m sure) there was no budget for graphics. I couldn’t go purchase a pretty stock photo of a light bulb. I can, however, make a visual out of the characteristic font I chose. I typed “oh!” into a textbox and rotated it slightly. Even without pictures, we can add graphic enhancement to make a bigger impact.
This slide shows Gail’s 25-word elevator statement. Clearly, this is not a slide where I’d want to remove any text. Every word needs to be there. For quotes like this, I broke up the text into naturally occurring chunks, most of which can be read at a glance, with no eye movement. It makes it easier to follow as the speaker reads the quote out loud. Each line is animated to appear as Gail speaks it.
Usually I don’t want the design to dictate the content of the workshop, but in this slide I reordered the bullets to make room for a graphic. As before, the text is animated to appear when Gail clicks, so she can time the appearance to coincide with her delivery. Then I added the For Sale sign for visual interest, to bring home the idea that these typical sales mantras are a little cheesy and outdated. Then I placed her examples, which had been her subbullets, right on the sign.
This post is part of the Fab Five Reboot, a project led by Stephanie Evergreen to redesign five slides from five of AEA’s eStudy workshop presenters. Visit the eStudy workshop page to learn more about our current lineup and for registration details.