I don't have any problem with templates particularly, indeed they are of course necessary to identify and guard against the marketing manager's worst nightmare: Brand Buggery. A style must be set and guidelines followed - of course they should, I'm all for this. Within these guides there is tons of room for creativity and individuality and I believe that any client should be at liberty to expect this to be the case from their designer of choice. After all, that's what designers train for.

What I am not in favour of is the modern templating systems which clever IT geezers put together from some hidden underground bunker which allow site managers, dealerships, MD's, apes, goldfish and even my mum to personalise an advert with their details. You might argue that the client stands to save money compared with a bespoke advert being set manually (the old fashioned way - may the force be with you) but I don't think that's the case at all. I think the clients are being over-sold things they don't need by greedy uber-agencies to the detriment of the smaller local companies that might have fed off this kind of work in the past. The real pity seems to be that because of the technical limitations these systems are often choked by- there seems to be a shift toward advertising praying at the altar of mediocrity, where everything looks the same.

I've noticed in the paper recently 2 things in the motors section to really highlight my point:

> 3 Chevrolet adverts are similar offers for the same cars and whilst the sizes vary slightly the only thing differentiating the ads are the address blocks. The result is 3 nearly identical ads over 2 pages.

> In the same section of the same paper so many of the templates consist of cars on a white background that they look the same as everyone else's - the only differentiator being the logo and font. Since when were cars so boring?

I feel sorry for site managers, marketing folk, dealerships and sales staff who are forced by brand Nazis to do their own adverts and still have to pay money for something which often says little about their own unique products, offers, services or opinions. To hell with tempting systems, bring on the rebellion - give us a call.