Coordinate Your Speakers with a Visual Theme

Each speaker on your conference panel is presenting their part of the session's topic. How does the audience know that all the speakers are part of the same team?

1. Well, first, there's the program. The audience might have a playbill in their hands, telling them who'll be speaking, and what part of the story they'll be telling.
2. Secondly, there's the positioning. Many conference speakers sit at the head table or in chairs toward the front of the stage, waiting for their turn to speak.
3. And thirdly, all of the speakers are wearing the same uniform. Like a sports team, all speakers have perfectly coordinated clothing, clearly demonstrating that they've practiced together before and are prepared to deliver a unified, cohesive pitch.

Maybe not so much. Huh? OK, so maybe we don't see perfectly coordinated outfits that much at conference panel discussions. But we see the PowerPoint equivalent of a uniform quite often!

Conference speakers often show the spirit of collaboration by coordinating the look and feel of their PowerPoint presentations. They throw away their corporate templates, or modify them to show solidarity among their fellow presenters.

• Same font, same color. Sometimes, speakers unify their presentations by using the same font and font color. If the font and color is very unique, say Coolvetica and lime green, this may work quite nicely. But Arial and black are too common to offer enough distinction.
• Same backgrounds, same colors. Other times, speakers may decide to use the same backgrounds and colors in their PowerPoint presentations. This can work for very short panel discussions, but after a while, the same colors and backgrounds can be very visually monotonous.
• Similar graphics, different colors. Perhaps the most Garanimals way to coordinate speakers is to use a similar graphic theme to introduce each speaker. The graphics can be different colors, but like a logo -- the mere shape provides the visual consistency among speakers.

Here's a quickie example:









Now, apparently, florals like these are not manly! But the above backgrounds decidedly show a coordinated effort among the speakers while potentially shaking things up visually for the audience.

And while a floral arrangement of PowerPoint backgrounds isn't exactly manly, the above backgrounds are at least man-friendly for a mixed panel!

What's your favorite method for visually coordinating your conference speakers?

Labels: PowerPoint Background

¶ 6/08/2007 09:21:00 AM