The Power of PowerPoint templates (and some limitations)
When using standard templates in your PowerPoint designs, it’s important to realize that they are just tools that are provided to give you power over the repetitive slides in your presentation. Sometimes it is easy to view the templates as fixed and unmalleable but they are best viewed simply as another tool to be used as needed.
In other words, templates can guide us in achieving a standardized look and feel for our presentation. They also
establish consistency so that, for example, headlines always appear in the same position on every slide and don’t
jump around as we click from one slide to the next. Those kinds of inconsistencies are jarring and distract us from
the message. Color is also a good reason to use templates in PowerPoint presentations because they help to hold the presentation together like a nicely wrapped package. That said, templates can and should be modified when it’s necessary, for example, to accommodate an extra line of text, a wider picture, or an additional graphic. Every presentation is unique, and many of my clients get frustrated because their template doesn’t “work” for every single presentation option. Clients understandably want to streamline their presentation design process, to maximize productivity. But there is only so much that a template can do. For example, if a Power Point template has been set up with a standard graph design that is used many times, then this template cannot automatically turn into a pie chart without some additional manipulation. With professional Power Point situations like this, I like to ask the client if the new chart need is one-of-a-kind or whether it is likely to recur in future. If it is likely to recur, then this is a good time to create a modified template to easily display this type of data in future.
Power Point design templates should be treated like a living and breathing thing which can be customized and modified as needed to fit the way your content is delivered to the audience.
