Verdigris Design System

Experimental

First slides cell. Graduates to convention after 2 customer-facing decks ship using these patterns.

Slide Decks

Verdigris produces decks across five engagement contexts. The contexts are different enough that one universal template fails all five and a different template per context succeeds. This cell defines the five genres and the rules that apply across them.

Pick the genre first

Genre When to use Primary audience
Pilot kickoff A customer just signed; this is the first artifact they receive Customer team executing the pilot (sponsor + working lead + engineers)
Customer 101 First substantive meeting with a prospect Prospect’s initial evaluator
Customer 201 Technical follow-up after the customer 101; pre-pilot diligence Prospect’s technical evaluator (engineering / DevOps / IT)
Partner enablement A channel partner needs to co-sell Verdigris Partner AE / channel manager
Internal team Verdigris-internal updates, prep, post-mortems Verdigris team members

Pilot kickoff is the primary genre. Customer 101, customer 201, partner enablement, and internal team are documented as deltas against pilot kickoff — they share the same scaffolding and only specify what changes.

Decision tree

  1. Audience is a Verdigris-signed customer in active engagement?
  2. Audience is a prospect (no contract yet)?
    • First substantive meeting → Customer 101
    • Post-101 technical follow-up; engineering / DevOps / IT evaluator → Customer 201
    • Already past technical eval → escalate to Pilot kickoff once a pilot is committed
  3. Audience is a partner / channel?
  4. Audience is internal Verdigris-only?

If the situation doesn’t fall out of this tree, do NOT improvise a sixth genre on the spot. Pick the closest existing genre, document the deviation, and propose a new genre via the adversarial-review workflow when more than one surface needs it.

Presentation density (universal axis)

Every deck declares one of three density modes that determines word budgets per slide, headline/body ratio, visual dominance, and whether speaker notes are required.

Mode Words/slide cap When to use Genre defaults
live-spoken ~30 Presenter-led; novel audience; deck supports speaker customer 101
dual-use ~80 Live presentation that will also be re-read async pilot kickoff, internal team
leave-behind ~150 No Verdigris presenter; deck IS the talk customer 201, partner enablement

The full per-mode matrix (caps, headline:body ratio, visual dominance, captions, speaker notes) lives in pilot-kickoff.md § Presentation density. Genre files declare a default-density: in frontmatter; producers override on the deck file when the delivery context warrants.

What’s universal across genres

Independent of genre, every Verdigris slide deck shares:

What varies across genres

The five genres differ on the axes below. The full matrix lives in pilot-kickoff.md; here is the summary:

Axis Pilot kickoff Internal team Customer 101 Customer 201 Partner enablement
Length 12-20 8-15 15-25 20-35 20-30
Voice primary mike thomas seren mike jimit
Voice supporting thomas mike + jon mike jon seren
Voice accent jon jimit mark (close only) thomas (pilot scoping) mike
Voice forbidden (none) (none) (none) mark (none)
CTA pattern Pilot scope + decision date Decision needed by [date] Next meeting + agenda Decision date for pilot commitment Co-sell motion + deal registration
Confidentiality default CUSTOMER-CONFIDENTIAL INTERNAL ONLY PUBLIC CUSTOMER-CONFIDENTIAL PARTNER-CONFIDENTIAL
Date format absolute week-N OK absolute absolute absolute
Logomark variant full lockup wordmark full lockup full lockup full lockup
Default density dual-use dual-use live-spoken leave-behind leave-behind

Decision framework: where to land in length bounds

The matrix above gives a length range per genre. Each cell guide carries a per-boundary decision framework; this is the cross-cell summary.

Genre Floor Default Ceiling
Pilot kickoff (12-20) 12 — small audience, single site, repeat engagement 15-16 — typical first pilot, single segment 20 — multi-site, broad audience, complex install/data flow
Internal team (8-15) 8 — routine weekly status 10-12 — pre-meeting prep, mid-engagement review 15 — post-mortem or multi-function board prep
Customer 101 (15-25) 15 — single technical evaluator, 30-min meeting 18-20 — typical first meeting, mainstream segment 25 — broad audience, novel segment, pricing on agenda
Customer 201 (20-35) 20 — tightly-scoped technical question 25-28 — typical post-101 follow-up 35 — broad evaluation team across architecture, security, ops
Partner enablement (20-30) 20 — partner already co-sells adjacents 25 — typical net-new partner 30 — regulated or unfamiliar segment, deeper FAQ

Default to the middle column. Push to the floor when audience or argument complexity is low; push to the ceiling when audience breadth, segment novelty, or coordination complexity is high. If three or more boundaries push to the ceiling, reconsider whether you have one artifact or a series.

Reference stylesheet + tokens

Rules

Six rules live in rules/visual-rules.yml under composition.persuade-slide-deck. Mode-conditional where applicable:

Rule ID Modes Type Linear
composition.persuade-slide-deck.logomark-consistency all constraint Z2O-1318
composition.persuade-slide-deck.confidentiality-marking external (3 of 4 genres) constraint Z2O-1319
composition.persuade-slide-deck.template-roles-not-names template-only constraint Z2O-1320
composition.persuade-slide-deck.absolute-dates external constraint Z2O-1322
composition.persuade-slide-deck.table-formatting all constraint Z2O-1323
voice.audience-fit-diction.exit-criteria external voice rule Z2O-1321

The diction rule lives in voice/recipes.yaml rather than visual-rules.yml because diction is a voice concern, not a visual one. The other five are visual/structural.

See also