Call it “The Day of the Client.” (More accurately: “The Night of the Client.”) That is, you. Call me tired! Not only did I give a 2-full-day seminar in Madrid 4 days after I got out of the hospital, but after arriving in Boston yesterday afternoon I confronted the revolt against the new slide format—and ended up pulling a no-bull “all nighter” to re-do every one of the roughly 1,150 slides in the “workingmaster.”
I came to loathe the Lucida Handwriting Font that was ubiquitous in my PP presentations. While preparing for my teleconference-seminar for Targeted Learning Corporation last week, their presentation guru, Dave Walzer [from D2 Productions], introduced me to One Stroke Script LED. After vociferous initial resistance, I went ape over the font, and after my TLC presentation I used half my hospital stay to incorporate it in the “workingmaster.” And I used it in Madrid. IT IS BEAUTIFUL.
But …
As you know, thanks to its odd size it creates a godawful mess if you don’t have it—and almost nobody does. My first response, “Screw them.” [I.e., Screw you!] It is wonderful in a presentation room—and that’s what I do first and foremost!! You yelped—appropriately. I fumed. (I after all had just spent 16 hours getting home from Madrid.) But I read the comments—and pondered on the roll of the Posted PPs at the site.
About 8P.M. last night, after soul searching and Font research, I decided to replace the mis-sized One Stroke with Arial Rounded MT Bold. It is a standard Windows Font, and, more important, it is the standard size, so it will default to Arial if you don’t have it.
At 8P.M. I walked to Starbucks, ordered 2 Ice-coffee Ventis and got to work. When S’bucks closed at 10P.M. I came home (I was in Boston, Susan was in Vermont) and worked until about 3A.M. I once again made several hundred, or perhaps a thousand, other changes in addition to re-sizing with Arial Rounded MT Bold. I went to sleep at 3A.M., got up at 4:30A.M., and finished about an hour ago, at 9:30A.M. (Whew.) So, attached, you will find the “new and improved” 1,131-slide “workingmaster.0224.06” PP.
(Incidentally, you’ll find some other cuckoo Fonts in the presentation, such as Chiller and Jokerman. They, too, are Windows standards, and more important standard size—so their absence should not screw up the presentation if you don’t have them.)
Listening to you all is/was important to me for several reasons: (1) I think it’s the right thing to do—and I preach it from every podium I can find. (2) It’s your site and our community. (3) You were right. (4) I learned something—don’t get cute. [“Simplicity,” Trevor would say.] (5) In the end I-we have a better product. And (6) sleep is for Wimps.
Thanks for the feedback. I’m going for my 6-mile or so Power Walk (from PP to PW, or some such.)
Cheers …