Your presentation template is an essential component of your brand. It serves as the conversational foundation for outbound communications such as web seminars, sales presentations, and technical presentations. Although these form the core, I could easily name a dozen more.
The groups and individuals who use your template vary greatly in their ability to create compelling presentations. Some have difficultly shortening complex ideas into concepts while others staunchly refuse to (or at least never) use any graphics or charts to liven things up.
Presentation templates can help tremendously but only if they’re designed correctly. Correctly isn’t 100% about how they look. Visual accouterments are but part of the story. Backgrounds are pretty, however the ease of inserting data is the coredifferentiator of what separates the good templates from the bad.
The audience doesn’t want to, nor do they have time to, fiddle with 38million individual text boxes. Larger, more inclusive text boxes are the way to go. It’s also important to avoid complicated animations and transitions. By complicated I’m talking about animations that are isolated to the multiple text boxes mentioned earlier. Complexity of navigation isn’t a winning recipe for visual stickiness. Lastly, in the world of graphics, less is more. Negative space is your friend and allows for the author of the presentation to easily insert graphics and charts of their own.
These are a few of the caveats for creating sound, reusable and broadly accepted presentation templates for your organization.
Posted by Amin on 02.01.2010 at 4:56pm 
1 comment
Email this post
The title of your blog post sucks.
See what happened there? I have some, I think, useful, accurate, feedback for you, but en route to trying to catch your eye, I’ve actually turned you off to hearing it.
You’re correct that it’s more likely true than not that my (and others’) presentation template sucks. And this post includes some excellent, concrete feedback on how to rehab and improve it.
But…as someone whose presentation template *does* suck, I instead feel a little embarassed and turned off by the title, regardless of the quality and utility of the fixes you mention.
I think this actually speaks to two larger points about learning:
First, most adult learners do not want to be approached as receptacles for information, but rather as voluntary partners in the learning process. I think it’s important to recognize and incorporate that into your training style, regardless of the knowledge differential between instructor and learner.
Second, what role does a blog play in the learning process? I think that many organizations–private, public, and non-profit sector–have been quick to jump on blogs as a platform without a clear understanding of where they fit in the larger learning arc. Is a blog a mechanism for shortening the distance between customer/client/funder/etc. and the organization? Or are you using it as another form of e-learning? I ask that, beacuse I’ve seen too many blogs purposed as instructional tools that take a tone and strategy that I don’t think the individual trainer or organization would necessarily use in a formal training session.