The new Google Slides templates are honestly funny

This month (November 2024) Google added "Templates" to Google Slides.

On the surface level, they look very good. But once you open one, you see the placeholder text, and you start wondering if it's satire. Here's what I mean.

Honestly perplexing: Every time there's a contact slide, the email is "no reply". That doesn't really make sense for a contact email...

Buzzword overload: This slide from "Sales Pitch"

Confusing: "Educational games" has a hardcoded winner

Surely satire: "Product overview minimal". Let's go over it.

• So we start with this company Cymbal. They make water bottles. Would you buy a water bottle from a company called Cymbal? I wouldn't but I guess some people might.
• It starts off relatively slow. "This is who we are", "these are our target consumers", etc.

• But then they explain that they're not just any water bottle company, they're solving a problem made up of 3 elements. As you can see, we know the exact proportion of each element:

  
• So then it explains their offering and how it's been growing, shows what it looks like and how it's been growing, and includes some testimonials. This is mostly normal. Oddly, they feature a 4 star review instead of a 5 star one.
• Then - no joke - they have a rewards program. How would a rewards program even work here?
• That's basically it. The rest is just the standard growth plan and contact information, including the signature no reply email address.

Accidental?: "Event faciliation" is supposed to be like flipping through a book, but it's out of order

On a positive note

Just interesting: "Class overview" uses vectors for a raster font graphic. (The other templates use a lot of vectors too, including for icons.)

Clever: "Course overview" uses Noto Emoji for monochrome icons.

All templates use free fonts from Google Fonts. It goes to show that you can make something without losing money.

Other thoughts

Templates are really weird in that they look and work like themes, but they're separate from themes. Perhaps Google thought themes had a bad rep.