Choosing wallpaper for a room involves decisions of colour, pattern, and density. Then, calculating the number of rolls required to cover the chosen area. Buying wallpaper before you have even bought the house it is going in makes no sense. But you probably decided on the template for your last presentation before you considered the content. You opened the laptop, launched PowerPoint, and selected a template. Then started adding text.
Slideware is not neutral. It shapes behaviour. That is why so many people choose microsoftbluewavetimesnewroman. The canvas is not even blank. It has titles and bulletpoints and begs you to make lists. Even AI does that for you now. You are not planning a message. You are decorating, populating a format. You are choosing wallpaper even before buying the house.
This is how good people build bad presentations. They approach the topic full of ideas and inspiration and open the program. The tool makes it easy and takes over your thinking. You feel rewarded as the slides fill with information and you choose the slides over a separate handout. It feels efficient. You add details of references and multiple images because the space looks empty on your laptop. You are not building structure for a presentation. You are building density of a document that will give you the script to stand up and read.
Recognising that no one likes to read along a complete script, you strip it down to bulletpoints that will guide your exposition. Of course it is a list, but it’s checklist of key points. When the list is complete and balanced and the slide looks full, you assume the message will be clear. And it looks great with the wallpaper.
This is The Matrix—an illusion of reality. The belief that reading out the complete list is teaching, even with some exposition. And that listening to this being read out is learning. It isn’t. It never was, even because lots of people do it. That is what the slideware does. It makes you feel like you have designed and created something of value, you have “made” a powerpoint, not a presentation. But with cool wallpaper.
You do not need better slide design. You need a better starting point. You do not need to design something for its aesthetic. It is not about the wallpaper but about the message. That is why a p³ presentation begins with p₁ the message, not with the wallpaper. Slideware can support your message, but it is not the place to create it.