The Internet is full with PowerPoint template packs. Some are plain ugly, but others are actually very pretty. These templates are usually created by designers who are good at design, but have little understanding of business. (When the template is called “business template” you should be warned).
These templates look great as a template, but as soon as a non-designer touches them, the magic disappears. This is partly the fault of the non-designer, PowerPoint itself, and the template.
The most common problem non-designers have is item counts: my problem has 4 issues, not 3, I want to add another dimension, how to put in the business units? Simple actions like adding or deleting a row in a carefully balanced graphical composition is tricky.
In addition, designers stick to a subtle consistent style, properly without realising it. Fonts are a certain size, white spaces, margins, composition. It all looks right. The non-designer does not have this natural eye. Charts look somehow different and inconsistent, even if you followed the “rules” of the template.
Most “business” slides are not 3D staircases or beautiful maps: your quarterly budget presentation needs tables, graphs, and boxes. But a template with just boxes does not look very attractive on the PowerPoint template market place.
In my own template store I tried to make an effort to do it right, it might look less spectacular at first sight, but the design will be 500x more useful. Still, things are not perfect, hence the work at upgrading the SlideMagic app to version 2.0.
(PS I am traveling at the moment so posts might be less frequent than usual)
Photo by Brina Blum on Unsplash