Backgrounds. Many default templates in PowerPoint or Keynote have very elaborate, very complex backgrounds, like this one for example. They imitate paper, they imitate wood, they imitate cloth – lots and lots of different things. And we do not use those templates anymore. They are a legacy of a design approach, which as it turns out was a passing fashion called skeumorphism. And let me explain what that is. This is an American-built woodie station wagon and they used to be made out of wood. But then the car makers gradually transitioned to steel bodies for their cars. But the wood was kept for, I don't know, nostalgia reasons. It was familiar to the target audience. They used to be for years and years and years. They looked at those woodie station wagons, and it was just too much of a shift for them. So, they replaced the actual wood with imitation wood. And even up to now, if you look at this very modern design by Ford, those horizontal lines on the side of the car, they are paying homage to that era. And the same was true for computer design for a number of years. The electronic shelf used to look like the actual bookshelf, and people were amazed. Oh my god! It looks like exactly like the real thing. The electronic notepad used to look like the actual notepad with little bits of torn paper there – and it looked gorgeous. So, the main idea was that we are trying to make new things familiar. Lots and lots of people are switching from physical notepads to iPads, for example, and we're trying to make things easier for them. But over time, people started to understand that there's just way too many excessive details here. Once you know how these things work, you do not need this fake leather and fake paper anymore. And the new design approach was pioneered by Microsoft this time and it was called flat design. And it looked like this, very streamlined, sometimes even, you know, stretching the definition of simplicity, sometimes overly simple. But at the moment, this is what's in vogue. And in about a year or two, everybody including Apple went from what's on the left to what's on the right. Radical simplification, much more clearer design and much cheaper design. Frankly, we do not need to put in all of this, you know, work on those details. So, flat design is trying to make more with less. We're trying to make things as simple as possible. And of course, flat design was widely criticized by being way too flat. And at the moment, we see something called Flat 2.0, for example, an approach by Google called Material Design which tries to combine certain elements of skeumorphism with flat design. As you can see, there are shadows here which is a very distinctive feature of skeumorphic design, but also it uses flat elements, and I think it is very distinctively Google. You cannot confuse this with anything else. The big problem of flat design, of course, is just all the same – it's the same for every corporation and we're trying to differentiate ourselves. This, for example, is a very distinctive Keynote template. I don't think you will have any trouble telling what company this is. This is, of course, Apple. And if you look at most of the large I.T. companies, Google, Amazon, Facebook, they all have something like this. They have their distinctive shade of blue or gray or some other color, and they use it with great effect. No page numbers, no logos, no nothing. Many people ask me, should I use light or dark background? And personally, I prefer light personally, I prefer white. I think it works much better if you print your slides and also it works great with pictures isolated on white. Sometimes, you have pictures without any background and they work seamlessly with white slides. Also, an additional bonus, sometimes you have to present in huge venues where the whole audience sits in the dark and light bounces off the screen. You can actually see at least the first and probably the second row of the audience, works for me. And also, an added bonus, sometimes you have to present in a huge audiences where people sit in the dark, and light bouncing off the screen allows you to see the first and probably the second row of the audience. You actually see the people you're talking to, which is very important for me, at least. And you can go for dark backgrounds. They are more distinctive and they are easier on the eyes in big venues. The reason they mostly use dark backgrounds is because if you have to sit in the audience and look for an hour and a half at white, big, white screen, your eyes get tired rather quickly. So, if you have a very long presentation in a big venue, dark background is your choice. Otherwise, I'd go for just simply white.
