The template footer was… HUGE. I measured. It was exactly one-fifth (20%!) of the screen. And it was the bottom 20% on a 16x9 (widescreen) template. With the header in play taking up another 25%, almost half of the slide was the title and the footer. I was left with a very wide, very white expanse to work with (the ratio of the content area was a whopping 3.82. By comparison, your wide-screen TV is 1.78, so this space could put two TV screens side-by-side). But I don’t typically have material that is formatted that wide. I prefer vertical space.
What to do? Do I conform or make the template work for my content? I chose the latter, risking alienating the conference directors. I edited the template and reduced the banner size to only 8% height (I wanted less, but it didn’t look right.)
Another problem with the template was the information they put in the banner. They had the WiFi network and password, the Twitter hashtag, and two logos (the conference and the sponsor, neither of which I directly represent). With apologies to the designer, if an audience member doesn’t know the WiFi login at 3pm on Day 2 of the conference, they aren’t likely to need it on slide 50 of my presentation. I deleted it. And the logos. And added in my Twitter handle and nothing else. I eliminated the page numbers – the audience does not need to know what slide I’m on.
After these changes, I looked at my imported content and most of it looked great. I added slides that pertained only to this group (17 of my 58 slides were new to this presentation – I rarely use a previous slide deck without a change). Some cursory proofing and I whisked it away to their portal.
My sponsor called. Apparently, I didn’t read all the directions. They (strongly) suggested a limit of ten slides. I had 58. I was faced with a(nother) decision.
First, my non-conformist attitude had a gut reaction of “This is stupid. What difference does the number of slides make?” (A main reason I was never a fan of Pecha Kucha was the arbitrary adherence to slide number). But I also had a keynote speech for a paying client with a guideline. And they’re supposed to always be right. Turns out their ten-slide mandate was for their people, not external folks, and I got off on that technicality. BUT… I had to add their hashtag to my reduced footer. I gave in and everyone was happy.
