The making of a presentation (part 4)
Graphical refinements
As I had already went through several version of the presentation in my mind things were starting to click. A short doodling session gave birth to a whimsical looking character I decided to use instead of the generic 'loose appendixes' one.
Some of the different stages on the way to a finished slide
Quick drafts of the different slides came about within minutes and could begin to consider the finer points. One of these finer points was to refine the earlier idea of somehow separating the two main-segments. I decided to make the 'feed'-slides with a strong line and strong colours as they referred to the more active side of my inspiration-recipe. In contrast, the 'rest'-slides should have a calmer, softer more organic look. Water colours seemed to fit the bill and even the fonts were either painted or traced by hand to make them more humane in appearance.
Know
your audience is another mantra that it is wise
to adhere to. Unfortunately I had no way of
finding the key-demographics among
slideshare-users. I did however know a little
about the judges of the competition. I even
recalled reading Guy Kawasaki praising the 'art
of sucking up'. I decided to give it a shot. As
all the judges are also authors, I decided to
include imagery of these in the 'Read'-slide.
The judges should recognize their own work, but
it should not distract from the presentation as
a whole. Certainly too good an opportunity to be
missed. As I finished my illustrations I scanned
them into my Mac and combined them with the text
in Photoshop where I also performed some
additional touch-up. The hard (but fun) part was
over...
