The Permanent Record

I was sent two slide decks for one day of courses, and they had nothing in common. I rebuilt both on one livery.

CoursesTermination of parental rights, a half day for Maryland's judges and magistrates. Its morning companion, on children in need of assistance, is shown here under a changed name, Cases in Need of Attention

FacultyTwo circuit court judges, with a panel of counsel for each party

My roleThe livery, the redesign of both decks, the slides that had no original, the illustrations, and the badges and table assignments

StatusDelivered, autumn 2026

2 to 1: faculty decks rebuilt on one livery
22: boards in the exhibit
14 to 25: point size of the labels on the ranked plans slide
12: illustrations drawn for the deck

What the two coordinators said

“I like what you did with the practical exercise.”

The coordinator of the termination-of-parental-rights course, a faculty check-in, August 2026

“By the way, I think the slides are beautiful, thank you.”

The coordinator of the child-in-need-of-assistance course, a faculty walkthrough. She thanked me and a faculty magistrate together: the deck was shared work.

One slide, before and after

Same five plans, same statute. The ranking is the content, so in the redesign the ranking is the picture.

Before, slide 6: Permanency Plans, Ranked. The five plans as a short list of small text in boxes over a narrow outlined triangle, on a blue slide. — **Before**Slide 6. The five plans as a list, set at 14 point.

After, slide 10: Permanency plans, ranked. A five-level pyramid, each level numbered and coloured, joined by a line to the plan it stands for, with the statute citation above. — **After**Slide 10. A full pyramid, 25 point labels, each rank joined to its plan.

How two decks became one day

The morning course was on children separated from their parents, shown here under a changed name, Cases in Need of Attention. The afternoon was on termination of parental rights. Each had its own coordinators and its own slide deck, and the subject they shared is a heavy one.

The morning deck came to me in bright orange and blue, with circles and swoops and no cohesion. The layouts didn't suit what was on the slides. The afternoon deck was an angry magenta and a dark blue, with weird shapes everywhere.

I wanted the day to move as one day of learning, even though it was two courses. So the first job was a livery that suited the subject and its weight without throwing out what the coordinators had sent me. I settled on navy, mauve and sage. The navy is the afternoon deck's blue toned down, and the morning deck's blue darkened. Mauve took the place of the magenta. Sage was my own invention.

Then I played with the shapes. The morning course got circles, arcs and soft shapes. By the afternoon they'd turned to diamonds, triangles and hard edges. Mauve is the morning's primary color and navy its secondary. The afternoon flips them, and sage is the accent in both.

I'm really pleased with how the slides turned out.

CINA, before and after

Two examples from the morning course: selecting a useful comparison from a table, then dividing a policy-heavy slide into a sequence.

A state table becomes a comparison

Maryland’s median receives the emphasis, with the longest and shortest stays in the supplied comparison alongside it. The full table remains a reference.

Before, CINA slide 9: the full state table of median months in foster care, shown as supplied in the morning deck. — **Before**Source slide 9. Full state table.

After: design iteration, slide 13. Maryland’s median receives the emphasis; the longest and shortest stays appear beside it. — **After · iteration**Slide 13. Selected comparison.

One slide becomes two

I separated the regulation from the agency policy and kept a repeated layout across the two slides. The sequence is visible before the presenter begins.

Before, CINA slide 17: the regulation and the agency policy together on one dense slide. — **Before**Source slide 17. Regulation and policy together.

After: design iteration, slide 25. Part 1, regulation, on its own, in the shared layout. — **After · iteration**Slide 25. Part 1: regulation.

After: design iteration, slide 26. Part 2, agency policy, repeating the layout from Part 1. — **After · iteration**Slide 26. Part 2: agency policy.

These are selected design iterations, not a final or faculty-approved deck. Faculty own the legal substance; the redesign includes wording changes. The companion-course boards in the gallery below are portfolio presentations of these examples, using changed course names and a different visual treatment.

Directing AI production

I used AI to produce course materials and designed the rules for that work. Recurring corrections became requirements that could be checked against the PowerPoint file.

The type-size rule

Readable type, checked in the file

I set an 18-point minimum, with a 14-point exception for running footers. The checker scales those thresholds to the slide canvas and reports explicitly sized text below the floor.

type_floor.pyRead-only check mode

python3 type_floor.py --check deck.pptx

The check inspects explicit text-size declarations. Visual review is still needed for inherited formatting, clipping and the finished slide.

The shipping check

A result tied to a particular deck

The shipping script combines the checks and writes their results with the deck’s SHA-256 hash. A later verification compares that hash with the file being reviewed.

ship_check.pyResults and file identity

ok = rec["sha256"] == sha(deck)
sys.exit(0 if ok and
         rec["gates_failed"] == 0 else 1)

A matching hash identifies the checked bytes; it does not establish faculty approval.

Source code is shown as implementation evidence. This exhibit does not claim that these scripts certified the slides above.

The 22 original boards

The original exhibit is preserved below, including its companion-course examples. Each spread pairs a slide from the original faculty deck with its redesign. The slides in part two had no original version. The factor slides are the exception: I rebuilt them and gave each factor its own color and shape.