Most preexisting template backgrounds are sharp and "hard", but I prefer mine a little bit fuzzy and smudged. I think it's easier on the viewers' eyes that way and helps to convey a relaxed mood for the presentation. Ideally, I want a background that resonates, but is not distracting.
One of my favorite backgrounds was for a presentation that I gave in 2010 on the subject of postcard collecting. On each text slide, I placed a stamp, so that my audience would feel as though they were reading postcards instead of slides.
Now it's time to create my slideshow for San Francisco Public Library, and so I've been looking for equally simple, restful, and resonant images to use as backgrounds. Of course, this being San Francisco, my thoughts quickly turned to the Golden Gate Bridge. The Golden Gate has been the subject of my archival cataloging and is also the current masthead of the San Francisco Public Library website, so it resonates appropriately ... But which image to use?
The SFPL masthead photo of the Golden Gate Bridge is a personal favorite: I love the color of the sky and the angle of the bridge. I wanted to incorporate it, but was worried about copyright. So, to get around that worry, I decided to distill some of the elements of the image into a visual that would be unambiguously my own.
My take is an extreme close-up of the top "window" of one of the towers, so that only the sky and vertical edges can be seen. It's so abstract and softened that many viewers probably won't even recognize it as the Bridge, but I think in spite of that, they will respond positively to the bright, yet restful, color scheme. The emphasis on the sky gives it a limitless and optimistic feeling, I think. Hopefully others will feel so, too.
Here's a preview:
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