![\"templates\"](\"http:\/\/presentation-skills-blog.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/templates-300x161.png\" "\\"templates\\"")
<\/a>Random templates<\/p><\/div>\n
It\u2019s all too easy in presentations to fall back on the \u2018standard\u2019 ways of doing things… templates and formulae. There isn\u2019t anything wrong with either of these ideas in principle (and in fact they\u2019re very useful when you\u2019re short of time, for example) but there are quite a few fairly significant downsides:<\/p>\n
- \n
- they\u2019re boring – slides that all look the same look the same! It looks like you\u2019ve not put the effort in, that you\u2019ve not got the imagination or (worse) than you just don\u2019t care. Why would I want to listen to someone who couldn\u2019t be bothered to make their presentation a little bit more interesting than just opening up a formula\/template file?<\/li>\n
- they\u2019re corporate – obviously there\u2019s nothing wrong with \u2018corporate\u2019 per se<\/em> but it risks automatically putting certain things in your audience\u2019s minds. If you look corporate, they expect corporate and – often – that means they tend towards being a bit more skeptical as a result<\/li>\n
- they\u2019re rubbish – it is possible to get a good template, of course it is. I\u2019m sure it is. Yes, it must be. By the law of averages there must be a good one out there. Definitely, If I just keep looking…<\/li>\n
- they\u2019re limiting – most of the ones I\u2019ve seen are based around bullet points… which, as we know, don\u2019t work! It\u2019s not the designer\u2019s fault necessarily, because – let\u2019s face it – what else can you put in a slide template. Pictures and anything interesting\/original aren\u2019t template-able (is that a real word?).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
With all that in mind, are there any good points?<\/p>\n
Sure. Some!<\/p>\n
- \n
- they\u2019re quick and they\u2019re safe. If you\u2019ve got an internal presentation to make and your PR department dictate you use something they\u2019ve created its a Career Limiting Move to do something different and better. Sometimes playing the corporate game is the only way to go<\/li>\n
- they avoid the worse excesses of stupidity (usually) – most of the ones I\u2019ve seen recently have a reasonable choice of font and an acceptable font size. At the very least templates avoid the put-a-printed-document-on-the-screen-in-12-point-TimesNewRoman-font!<\/li>\n
- they\u2019re professional – at least whoever created it will almost certainly have sorted out the problems of hideous, clashing colours.\u00a0 White text on a pale pink background might look sexy to the amateur but not professional is going to let that happen. Are they?<\/li>\n
- they\u2019re re-useable – if you\u2019ve got a good enough one, you can re-use it. But see the note above about being lazy!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
The template-buster, to me, is that they\u2019re templates<\/strong>. Obvious as it may seem, just being a template is a bad thing. They try and do a one size fits all design and, frankly, that doesn\u2019t wash.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s say you want to make a presentation to explain a problem and look at possible solutions.<\/p>\n
Firstly, the difference between a problem and a solution is so significant that I can barely imagine a template which can do both with impact and elegance. Add to that the need to differentiate between alternative possible solutions and you\u2019ve got another problem.<\/p>\n
But even then the horror isn\u2019t over! Why should one solution be similar enough to another to mean that the best way of explaining them both is for (not only slides, but) nearly identical slides?!<\/p>\n
The key point is this.<\/p>\n
When you\u2019re designing a slide ask yourself what is the best way to design this slide to get the contents over?<\/strong><\/p>\n
Then design that slide in that way.<\/p>\n
If two slides happen to come out similarly, then that\u2019s great. On the other hand if they come out very different, that\u2019s probably even better.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s all about the message – and getting it over – not about the amount of template-prettiness!<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a simple (oh, so very simple) concept it should be self-evident. But it isn\u2019t. Not if the amount of presentations I see with corporate templates is anything to go by!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
… be a voice. It\u2019s all too easy in presentations to fall back on the \u2018standard\u2019 ways of doing things… templates and formulae. There isn\u2019t anything wrong with either of these ideas in principle (and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-presentation-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1797\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}