The background image should not distract from the presentation, they should be images without much action that add, not detract, to the quality of the presentation. This also goes along with limiting the text on the slide because no one wants to be read to off a slide or spend the entire time copying the slide.
Reading bullet point after bullet point or a massive text block is boring in a presentation. Audience members will spend the entire time writing and ignoring the presenter. Slides are meant to support the presentation, the real purpose is to listen to the presenter and learn the information from them.
Animation is a useful tool when used infrequently and subtly. If the entire presentation has bullet points that all have an animated entrance, audience members will quickly become bored as they wait for each bullet point to appear.
Using unique, high quality images prevents the audience members from being bored by the typical PowerPoint templates they’ve seen hundreds of times. Also, using high quality images makes the presentation more visually appealing. One key thing to remember if using someone else’s images is to give credit and use creative commons.
Having a consistent theme helps the presentation flow smoothly, but using a PowerPoint template that everyone has seen will be boring for audience members. Using background images that are unique makes the presentation more interesting, as long as proper citations are used.
Use the least amount of data needed, even though that seems counter-productive. This will make the chart easier to read and the audience can focus on the presenter’s words and not the chart. Use easy to read charts like bar, pie, and column.
Color in presentations is used for emotion and knowing how colors relate to each other (ex: red and green are complementary and make each other stand out, put flesh tones next to cool tones) really makes a presentation look good. It is also important to know the type of setting in which you are presenting, if the room is going to be light, use darker text colors.
The font of the most important aspects of the presentation. Make sure to choose the right font, one that is big enough, is sans-serif (meaning no decorative swirls), and one that can be read from far away. Above all, don’t use ComicSans.
The use of video and audio should be limited. If you’re going to use them, make sure they get the message across in an easy to understand way and make sure the video/audio is short. Also, make sure to embed the link in the presentation so you don’t have to leave the presentation and set up something else.
Using the Slide Sorter function allows the presenter to see to see their slides beforehand and decide whether some slides need to be moved or broken up into multiple slides because people learn better when they are presented with small chunks of information.