By Susan de la Vergne Brace yourself. I'm going to make a shocking recommendation about how to prepare slides for technical presentations. Here goes: Don't use design templates. Ever. You know the ones I mean, those decorative templates in PowerPoint and other slide products with the colored frames, borders and bars, and the dots and doodads in the corner. They're a terrible idea! Why? Because design templates detract from your presentation rather than improve it.
