RE: Buying a template question

From: John Langhans [MSFT] (johnlan_at_online.microsoft.com)
Date: 03/15/04 

Date: Mon, 15 Mar 2004 17:46:39 GMT

[CRITICAL UPDATE - Anyone using Office 2003 should install the critical
update as soon as possible. From PowerPoint, choose "Help -> Check for
Updates".]

Hi Jim,

[Step on to soapbox]

You happen to touch on one of my pet peeves. It's a common misconception
among many PowerPoint template providers that all you need to create a good
template is a pretty background (usually an image) and one color scheme
that looks good with that background (some don't even go so far as creating
a compatible scheme but just provide a set of background images). In fact,
the subtle interaction between background, text, drawing objects and color
schemes is often not appreciated and results in inflexible designs that
don't work well with a wide range of color schemes (usually starting with
the poor decision to use a background that is an image instead of something
created using Microsoft Office drawing tools). It's understandable, of
course, because it takes additional time, effort and understanding to
create presentation designs than it does to just create a background image.
 I'm not saying that a design based, primarily, on a background image is a
bad thing, just that it can be very limiting. Of course, with the later
versions of PowerPoint (with their true transparency capabilities), even
many of these limitations can be mitigated. Of course, even Microsoft
creates internal and external presentations with designs using background
images, and this is fine for presentations that are, basically, single-use
/ single-event presentation designs (good looking, prevents variability
between different presentations for same event, etc.). But for commercially
available designs, I would expect more flexibility by providing a number of
compatible color schemes with each template.

[Step off of soapbox]

NOTE: There are lot of additional free PowerPoint design templates
available from the Office Online web-site.

http://office.microsoft.com/templates/category.aspx?CategoryID=CT01016157103
3&CTT=4&Origin=ES790000301033

However, since most of them were not created using the same template
authoring tools and guidelines applied to designs that actually ship with
PowerPoint <mostly created by 3rd parties as well as different internal
groups> you will discover that many of them suffer from the same lack of
flexibility apparent with "background" only designs. The good news is that
you can (and I encourage you to) provide feedback to the designers via the
download page for each design on this site.

John Langhans
Microsoft Corporation
Supportability Program Manager
Microsoft Office PowerPoint for Windows
Microsoft Office Picture Manager for Windows

For FAQ's, highlights and top issues, visit the Microsoft PowerPoint
support center at: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?pr=ppt
Search the Microsoft Knowledge Base at:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?pr=kbhowto

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