Conferences and Power Point

[IRdreams]

So I need to design some slides for a conference I am going to. My university has a nice template for slides that I have seen others use within the department. However, my conference is out in the wide world. Would logo-ed slides be too pretentious?

[fuzzylogician]

I've recently had to ponder this very question myself; I thought that the templates my university provides are actually quite nice looking, but having the university logo on every slide is just a bit too much for my taste. I did use the university colors similarly to the design of the official slides and I put the logo on the first slide, but generally I prefer to keep it as simple as possible.

Edited March 22, 2011 by fuzzylogician

[hello! :)]

So I need to design some slides for a conference I am going to. My university has a nice template for slides that I have seen others use within the department. However, my conference is out in the wide world. Would logo-ed slides be too pretentious?

How big are these logos that we're talking about? I would personally err on the side of caution and forgo the predesigned slides. There will always be people who will take it the wrong way and see it as a pretentious act. Of course, this only matters if you care about what other people think.... And unfortunately, I do care very much about what other people think of me!

[IRdreams]

It is a banner on the top of the slide, but it is on every slide. I think I'm going to cover over the logo on slides other than the title slide. But I was curious in general how people felt about this issue. What sort of academic ares go to far, especially at a conference?

[socialcomm]

I worked in marketing for a long time and I see the benefit of branding standards. As a grad student, you're representing your university. I would hope the ppt templates are professionally done by the school and not obnoxious (although that might not always be the case!).

[timuralp]

Most of the presentations I've seen include some sort of branding, usually in the corner of every slide. We typically use the group logo for it, from which the university is also obvious.

[IRdreams]

So I'm definitely seeing divergent views here. I'm wondering if part of this can be explained by different types of conferences. Would you be more comfortable branding yourself at large flagship of the discipline conferences but less so at more intimate graduate students only conferences?

[Eigen]

I redesigned the university slides... Went from a huge banner to a small corner logo, with a nice color scheme. Several others in the department are using them now.

[robot_hamster]

Like someone else said, I would just put it on the first slide. I see people do that all the time. It starts looking pretty silly when someone puts them on each and every slide.