I came across this template in a meeting yesterday. I am not picking on this specific company that is using this PowerPoint template, it is just a great example of templates that almost all companies in high-tech use. “Business-like” settings, professional models and big logos and graphical elements repeated on every page.
Technically, these templates are well executed (images, composition, colors). Your presentations look professional but they do not really stand out. They could look so much better and more original.
I do realize that creating a standard PowerPoint template for large corporations that have thousands of employees, most of them not skilled in PowerPoint, that have to produce documents that look vaguely consistent in format is a challenge.
Some suggestions:
- Avoid professional models in slides, but especially in templates. They are not real people.
- Get rid of “frames” around slides, the blue line at the bottom is not required
- Avoid heavy graphical elements on the page, especially at the top. It makes the slide too heavy
- I do like using images as separators for different sections in presentations. Instead of using images of models, hire a photographer and use real images: anonymous people in the street of cities your offices are located, images of a delivery truck unloading your product for different stores, cafes that feature your beer brand on their building facade. If you want to use people, take real ones (employees from all over the world that use your software) and include many, many, many images to avoid boredom of seeing the same face