Before we begin discussing what to do, let's talk about what's wrong first. And I will be talking three kinds of templates. I will be talking about Default PowerPoint or Keynote templates that many of my university students use. I will be talking about templates which could be purchased or downloaded for free on the Internet, which many of my small and medium-sized clients use. And I will be talking about custom-designed corporate templates which my corporate clients use. And first things first, let's begin with PowerPoint. And it used to be the worst offender, and it still is in many areas, although PowerPoint is becoming better and better with each iteration. So if there's any chance you can upgrade your software, by all means do so. Still, those vertical lines do not make reading very easy. And the reflection from the title, I don't know if we need this reflection. I think it has to go. This is decoration, not design. And there are many, many excessive decorative elements in most of the PowerPoint templates which just, you know, have to go. Another example, it's just way too light on top and way too dark – the bottom half. And I've seen people using this template or another version of the same idea, just switching the font color in the middle of the slide. Because white on light blue, the audience cannot see. And down below, it has to be white. And once again, way too many excessive details, way too much decoration. Most of those elements will have to go in a properly designed template. Another example from Apple Keynote, which is slightly better but not ideal. Sometimes, they do this thing with frame within the frame and sometimes within the frame, like they're chopping little bits of slide because the slide is just way too big, which is never the case. Right? The slide is usually way too small. The problem is that the audience cannot see the text well enough. So I don't think that you need two frames. One is probably more than enough if you want to have, you know, some decoration. This is a slide that you can download for free. I've just googled free PowerPoint template. This is what comes up. Purple on purple, not the brightest idea. And I think those details down below, those illustrations, are entirely unnecessary. I don't think you need this female rider repeating on every slide. And page two, come on, do you really need the word page with the number? Do you need the number? Always have to ask yourself this question. This slide actually helps you understand the logic behind all this. Make effective presentations using awesome backgrounds. Engage your audience. No, I'm sorry, I'm afraid it doesn't quite work that way. You do not engage your audience with awesome background. You engage your audience with awesome content. And this is just distracting. I think this office chair, everything you paid good money for, has to go. It takes like 20 percent of the entire slide. I don't think we need this office chair and this blue rectangular thing. So bad news for the designers, probably. Yet another template that you can purchase on Shutterstock, I think. Way too much color. Right? Once again, purple and purple. Here, we have black and red. Very aggressive. I don't know what those people are selling. Maybe it's weapons of mass destruction or something. And this gray cityscape in the background, I think it needs to go as well. I don't think we need it repeating on every slide. This is a corporate template from a Fortune 500 company which I never worked with, sadly. And come on, do we really need those blue triangles? I don't think anyone would miss those. We can make them way smaller and have much more space for text which is always a challenge. Another example from a huge corporation. And the first thing that I see when I see this template: Arial. Oh, come on. This looks like 1996 or something. And we'll talk about selecting proper typeface for your presentation further on. But secondly, I don't know if you can see it well enough but this logo and page number and this blue line jam-packed together. And I think there's just not enough space for a logo. The logo needs some space around it. This is typically what they say in the style guides. So I think this is a much better version of the same template. We have to choose the alternative font as well. But once again, this is a small but an improvement. I think this is more or less ideal. This background, this pattern, red and blue, is very distinctive. You cannot confuse this template with anything else. Reasonably small logo. The only problem with this template is Calibri as a default typeface. And once again, you can do so much better than this. I think we have to change it to something else. This is more or less ideal. It has a small logo, a small page number which you sometimes need, and a custom-designed typeface specifically for this particular company. Most of the templates that I tend to use in my work look more or less like this, because nothing, almost nothing to pay for. Right? But I think colors and typeface are important. They are the things you communicate your brand identity with. So what is wrong with templates? Let me conclude. Too much clutter. Too much unnecessary details. Too much backgrounds, headers, etc. etc. The logo, most of the time, is just way too big. We have to go inside the master slide, make the logo smaller, sometimes with the whole group as part of the seminar. The colors are wrong. Sometimes they are, you know, wrong for this brand, but sometimes there's just way too much color or way too many colors, different colors. And finally, poor choice of typeface, almost always the case. And we will talk about choosing proper typeface for your presentation at the end of this part.
