what is a bad powerpoint presentation

Blog > Common mistakes in PowerPoint and what makes a bad presentation

Common mistakes in PowerPoint and what makes a bad presentation

08.09.21   •  #powerpoint #tips.

Creating and giving a good presentation is actually not that difficult. If you know how to do it. Otherwise, no matter how much effort you put into it, it can quickly turn out to be a bad presentation.

Here we show you some examples of bad PowerPoint slides and common mistakes that are often made in presentations so that you won’t make them in your next presentation and avoid "Death by PowerPoint".

1. Reading aloud instead of speaking freely

One aspect in bad presentations is often that the text is simply read out. Prepare your presentation so well that you can speak freely. The goal is to build a connection with your audience and get them excited about your topic. However, this will hardly be possible if you only read from a piece of paper or your computer the whole time. Your audience should feel addressed, if you just read off, they will be bored and perceive your presentation as bad, even if your content and your PowerPoint are actually good.

2. Technical Problems

The sound of the video you inserted on a slide is not on, your laptop does not connect to the beamer, or your microphone does not work. These are just some of the problems that could occur during your presentation.

But nothing is more annoying than when technical problems suddenly occur during a presentation or even before, when everyone is waiting for it to start. It interrupts your flow of speech, only distracts the audience from the topic and breaks concentration. So before you get started with your presentation, it is important to first start your PowerPoint in the place where you will give it later, practice there and familiarize yourself with the technology.

• Don't forget the charging cable for your laptop
• Find out beforehand how you can connect your laptop to the beamer. Find out which connection the beamer has and which connection your laptop has. To be on the safe side, take an adapter with you.
• Always have backups of your presentation. Save them on a USB stick and preferably also online in a cloud.
• Take a second laptop and maybe even your own small projector for emergencies. Even if it's not the latest model and the quality is not that good: better bad quality than no presentation at all.

3. Losing the attention of your audience

One of the most common mistakes in presentations is to lose the attention of your audience. Especially in long presentations it is often difficult to keep your audience’s attention and to avoid “Death by PowerPoint”. Anyone who has had this experience knows how uncomfortable it is to give a presentation where you notice that no one is actually really listening to you. Especially if your presentation is an eternally long monologue, it is difficult to get the topic across in an exciting way and to captivate the audience.

Our tip: Include interactive polls or quizzes in your presentation to involve your audience and increase their attention. With the help of SlideLizard, you can ask questions in PowerPoint and your audience can easily vote on their own smartphone. Plus, you can even get anonymous feedback at the end, so you know right away what you can improve next time.

Here we have also summarized further tips for you on how to increase audience engagement.

4. Avoid eye contact

You want your audience to feel engaged in your presentation, but if you avoid eye contact the whole time, they certainly won't. Avoid staring at just one part of the wall, at your paper or your computer. If the participants have the feeling that you are just talking to the wall, it is a bad presentation. Speak to your audience, involve them in your presentation and make it more exciting for them.

But also make sure you don't always look at the same two or three people, but address everyone. If the audience is large, it is often difficult to include everyone, but still try to let your eyes wander a little between your listeners and look into every corner of the room.

5. Speaking incoherently

Avoid jumping from one topic to the next and back again shortly afterwards. Otherwise your audience will not be able to follow you after a while and their thoughts will wander. To prevent this, it is important that your presentation has a good structure and that you work through one topic after the other.

Nervousness can cause even the best to mumble or talk too fast in order to get the presentation over with as quickly as possible. Try to avoid this by taking short pauses to collect yourself, to breathe and to remind yourself to speak slowly.

6. Many colors mixed with each other

Make sure that your presentation is not too colorful. If you mix too many colours, bad presentation slides will result very quickly. A PowerPoint in which all kinds of colors are combined with each other does not look professional, but rather suitable for a children's birthday party.

Think about a rough color palette in advance, which you can then use in your presentation. Colors such as orange or neon green do not look so good in your PowerPoint. Use colors specifically to emphasize important information.

It is also essential to choose colors that help the text to read well. You should have as much contrast as possible between the font and the background. Black writing on a white background is always easy to read, while yellow writing on a white background is probably hard to read.

7. Too minimalistic design

Even though it is often said that "less is more", you should not be too minimalistic in the design of your presentation. A presentation where your slides are blank and only black text on a white background is likely to go down just as badly as if you use too many colors.

Empty presentations are boring and don't really help to capture the attention of your audience. It also looks like you are too lazy to care about the design of your presentation and that you have not put any effort into the preparation. Your PowerPoint doesn't have to be overflowing with colors, animations and images to make it look interesting. Make it simple, but also professional.

8. Too much text

The slides of your presentation should never be overcrowded. Write only the most important key points on your slides and never entire sentences. Your audience should not be able to read exactly the text you are speaking in your PowerPoint. This is rather annoying and leads to being bored quickly. Summarize the most important points that your audience should remember and write them down in short bullet points on your presentation.

9. Many different animations

To avoid bad presentations it is important to never use too many animations. It looks messy and confusing if every text and image is displayed with a different animation. Just leave out animations at all or if you really want to use them then use them only very rarely when you want to draw attention to something specific. Make sure that if you use animations, they are consistent. If you use transitions between the individual slides, these should also always be kept consistent and simple.

10. Too many images

Bad presentation slides often occur when their design ist unclear and unorganised. Images and graphics in presentations are always a good idea to illustrate something and to add some variety. But don't overdo it with them. Too many images can distract from your presentation and look messy. Make sure that the graphics also fit the content and, if you have used several pictures on one slide, ask yourself whether you really need all of them.

11. Too many or unreadable fonts

Never combine too many fonts so that your presentation does not look messy. Use at most two: one for headings and one for text. When choosing fonts, you should also make sure that they are still legible at long distances. Script, italic and decorative fonts are very slow to read, which is why they should be avoided in presentations.

It is not so easy to choose the right font. Therefore, we have summarized for you how to find the best font for your PowerPoint presentation.

12. Images as background

To avoid bad presentations, do not use images as slide backgrounds if there should be also text on them. The picture only distracts from the text and it is difficult to read it because there is not much contrast with the background. It is also harder to see the image because the text in the foreground is distracting. The whole thing looks messy and distracting rather than informative and clear.

13. Reading from the slides

Never just read the exact text from your slides. Your audience can read for themselves, so they will only get bored and in the worst case it will lead to "Death by PowerPoint". You may also give them the feeling that you think they are not able to read for themselves. In addition, you should avoid whole sentences on your slides anyway and only have listed key points that you go into more detail then.

14. Turn your back

Never turn around during your presentation to look at your projected PowerPoint. Not to read from your slides, but also not to make sure the next slide is already displayed. It looks unprofessional and only distracts your audience. In PowerPoint's Speaker View, you can always see which slide is currently being displayed and which one is coming next. Use this to make sure the order fits. You can even take notes in PowerPoint, which are then displayed during your presentation. You can read all about notes in PowerPoint here.

15. Forgetting the time

Always pay attention to the time given. It is annoying when your presentation takes much longer than actually planned and your audience is just waiting for you to stop talking or you are not able to finish your presentation at all. It is just as awkward if your presentation is too short. You have already told everything about your topic, but you should actually talk for at least another ten minutes.

Practice your presentation often enough at home. Talk through your text and time yourself as you go. Then adjust the length so that you can keep to the time given on the day of your presentation.

16. Complicated Structure

The structure of your presentation should not be complicated. Your audience should be able to follow you easily and remember the essential information by the end. When you have finished a part, briefly summarize and repeat the main points before moving on to the next topic. Mention important information more than once to make sure it really gets across to your audience.

However, if the whole thing gets too complicated, it can be easy for your audience to disengage after a while and not take away much new information from your presentation. So a complicated structure can lead to bad presentations and "Death by PowerPoint" pretty quickly.

17. Inappropriate clothes

On the day of your presentation, be sure to choose appropriate clothing. Your appearance should be formal, so avoid casual clothes and stick to professional dress codes. When choosing your clothes, also make sure that they are rather unobtrusive. Your audience should focus on your presentation, not on your appearance.

18. Inappropriate content

Think about who your audience is and adapt your presentation to them. Find out how much they already know about the topic, what they want to learn about it and why they are here in the first place. If you only talk about things your audience already knows, they will get bored pretty soon, but if you throw around a lot of technical terms when your audience has hardly dealt with the topic at all, they will also have a hard time following you. So to avoid "Death by PowerPoint" in this case, it is important to adapt your presentation to your audience.

You can also ask a few questions at the beginning of your presentation to learn more about your audience and then adapt your presentation. With SlideLizard , you can integrate polls directly into your PowerPoint and participants can then easily answer anonymously from their smartphone.

19. Too much or unimportant information

Keep it short and limit yourself to the essentials. The more facts and information you present to your audience, the less they will remember.

Also be sure to leave out information that does not fit the topic or is not relevant. You will only distract from the actual topic and lose the attention of your audience.

20. Monotone voice

If you speak in a monotone voice all the time, you are likely to lose the attention of your audience. Make your narration lively and exciting. Also, be careful not to speak too quietly, but not too loudly either. People should be able to understand you well throughout the whole room. Even if it is not easy for many people, try to deliver your speech with confidence. If you are not enthusiastic about the topic or do not seem enthusiastic, you will not be able to get your audience excited about it.

Examples of bad presentations to download

We have created a PowerPoint with examples of bad presentation slides and how to do it right. You can download it here for free.

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About the author.

Helena Reitinger

Helena supports the SlideLizard team in marketing and design. She loves to express her creativity in texts and graphics.

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The Best And Worst PowerPoint Presentation Examples

Who wouldn’t appreciate a PowerPoint presentation that is eye-catching and easy to understand? With the best and worst PowerPoint presentation examples below, you’ll know what makes a good PowerPoint presentation and what makes a bad one.

Engaging presentations are the lifeblood of effective communication in today’s information-driven world. Whether you’re in a boardroom pitching a new idea, standing in front of a classroom of curious learners, or delivering a keyote speech to an interested investor, the ability to create and deliver engaging presentations is a skill that can truly make or break your message. 

Various elements contribute to making a presentation good or bad, from compelling visuals to persuasive delivery; these factors collectively influence how your ideas are received and remembered. So, in this article, we will look at some of the good and bad presentation examples to help you transform your presentations and make them more engaging.

Main Differences Between Good V/S Bad PowerPoint Slides

Knowing the difference between the best and worst PowerPoint presentations is vital for creating engaging presentations.

What Makes A Good PowerPoint Presentation?

Have you ever wondered how you differentiate between a good design v/s bad design PPT? In this section, we’ll look at some examples of making PowerPoint presentations that inspire and engage the audience. Look at what’s behind the slides that stick in mind long after the projector is turned off:

• Less text, more impact
• Choose a color scheme that works
• Proper balance of animation and texts
• Logical flow of information
• Context-relevant graphics or illustrations

READ MORE: The Golden Rules for Impactful Presentations 

1. Less Text, More Impact

Imagine your presentation as a visual storybook. Less text on each slide means your audience can focus on your story, not squint at paragraphs. Use striking images or a single powerful phrase to grab attention. It makes your presentation look impressive and helps people remember the article’s key points. Keeping about 30 words per slide or 6-8 lines in your presentation will help maintain a proper flow of words and pictures, resulting in a fluid presentation.

2. Choose A Color Scheme That Works

You don’t need to be an artist to pick the right colors. A good presentation uses colors that work together nicely. Choosing harmonizing colors can guide the audience to focus on important information. Choose colors that look good together and don’t hurt the eyes. Microsoft Office’s color schemes can save the day if you’re short on ideas. Avoid using light colors on a dark background and vice versa.

3. Proper Balance Of Animation And Texts

Animations and transitions can be like party crashers in your presentation if not used wisely. They might steal the show from your message. A top-notch presentation keeps both animations and texts in check, ensuring they don’t overpower each other. However, don’t ditch them altogether! Use transitions and animations only to highlight key points. For example, make bullet points appear individually instead of all at once. It keeps your audience focused.

READ MORE: How to add animation in PowerPoint?  

4. Logical Flow Of Information

Think of your presentation as a road trip. Imagine if your GPS gave you all mixed up directions. Chaos, right? Similarly, your slides need a logical order and a roadmap. Maintaining the logical flow of your slides helps the audience follow the information easily. A logical flow makes your message clear and easy to remember. It’s like telling a great story with a beginning, middle, and end.

EXPLORE: Flowchart PowerPoint Templates

5. Context-Relevant Graphics Or Illustrations

A picture speaks volumes. Our brains love visuals. Using context-related graphs, photos, and illustrations that complement your slides can amp up important pointers and keep your audience engaged during the presentation. However, while presenting, make sure to explain why a graphic or a picture is there. Explaining the graphics verbally makes your message crystal clear and memorable.

EXPLORE: Want to create stunning presentations? Check out our presentation services !

A PowerPoint presentation shall excel in these aspects of making it engaging, informative, and memorable. These good PowerPoint presentation examples could help you make a better PPT in one or more areas, not leaving the audience disengaged or confused. 

While it’s important to look at good presentation examples, it’s equally important to avoid mistakes that can turn your presentation dull.

What Makes A Bad PowerPoint Presentation?

Ever been in a room with a presentation that made you want to escape through the nearest exit? We’ve all been there! In this section, we’ll highlight some common mistakes that turn a good presentation into a dull one. With many examples of good and bad PowerPoint slides on the internet, we have listed some bad examples that show the ‘DON’Ts’ and ‘AVOID AT ALL COSTS’ of PowerPoint mistakes:

• Image behind the text
• Using only bullet points and no paragraphs
• Having no symmetry in texts and pointers
• Being too minimal
• Keeping text too small

1. Image Behind The Text

Anyone who considered utilizing an image as a background most likely missed the memo. Text and images simply do not work together. One of the worst PowerPoint presentation examples is text overlaid on an image. Keeping the image in the background complicates understanding the text, and the main image should be clarified. Finding a text color that shines out in the background is nearly tough because all of those colors merely draw your attention away from the words. To avoid this calamity, avoid utilizing photos as slide backgrounds when you have text to highlight.

EXPLORE: Best PowerPoint Backgrounds Collection

2. Using Only Bullet Points And No Paragraphs

To make a presentation audience-friendly, reducing paragraphs to bullet points is a wise choice. However, it is critical to emphasize that this is more than simply putting only bullet points and leaving out all paragraphs. Using 5-8 bullet points is ideal for a slide. If the text size shrinks to 12 or 10 points, you’ve written a lot. Lengthy bullet points tend to bore the audience; some might even think of them as paragraphs.

3. Having No Symmetry In Texts And Pointers

A lack of balance or alignment between textual material and supporting visual elements, such as arrows, bullets, etc., can make your presentations appear unpleasant. When text and pointers are strewn about, it’s difficult for the audience to follow a logical flow of information; a common bad PowerPoint slide example to avoid at any cost. Your audience will be obsessed with deciphering the relationship between the text and graphics if your presentation needs more harmony.

4. Being Too Minimal

Being too minimalistic is as bad as overdoing it. Not having the required text on slides or keeping them blank makes them dull and non-engaging. You don’t need a color explosion or too many texts, but bringing some life to your slides is always a good idea. Using pre-made PowerPoint templates is a good idea to keep your content balanced; however, it is best not to leave blank spaces. A blank slide with no colors or text might give the impression of minimal effort. Strive for a balanced approach to keep your audience engaged and awake.

EXPLORE: 40,000+ PowerPoint Templates and Google Slides Themes

5. Keeping Text Too Small

Another thing to avoid is making your font size too tiny, almost like the size of a peanut. The size of the font is extremely important in any presentation. Think of it like trying to enjoy a beautiful scenic view through a tiny keyhole – not very enjoyable, is it? It’s the same with your PowerPoint. Your slides can be perfect with great colors, and graphics, but it’s a bummer if your audience can’t read them. A simple trick is to stand at the back of the room where you’ll present. If you can read the font comfortably, then you should be fine!

READ MORE: Best Presentation Fonts

A bad PowerPoint presentation will dismiss all your efforts and disengage your audience. To look more, avoid these bad PowerPoint presentation examples at any cost while making your next presentation.

We have carefully curated a visual appearance of how your PowerPoint presentations change by following the aforementioned points.

A good PowerPoint presentation is a balance – not too much, not too little. It’s about enhancing your message, not taking the spotlight away from you. However, striking that balance requires a lot of practice and trial and error.

You can always opt for presentation design services , like SlideUpLift. It gives you the advantage and access to presentation specialists. We design visually appealing presentations, with modern design elements, graphics, and illustrations; maintaining a perfect balance of every element. 

Whether you want to customize your slides completely or just tailor the color or font, we ensure that your brand or personal style always reflects in your presentation. 

Explore from our collection of 40,000+ PowerPoint templates and Google Slides themes. Utilize our presentation design services to create stunning PPTs. Give us a try with our custom-slides service , or schedule a call with us to know more!

What is the biggest difference between the best and worst PowerPoint presentations?

A good PowerPoint presentation effectively communicates its message, engages the audience, and uses visuals, layout, and content in a clear and compelling manner. In contrast, a bad PPT has cluttered slides, too much text, poor design choices, or distracting elements that hinder understanding.

How can I avoid making a bad PowerPoint presentation?

To avoid creating a bad PowerPoint presentation, focus on simplicity, use visuals wisely, keep text concise, maintain a logical flow, use appropriate fonts and colors, and avoid excessive animations or irrelevant content. Seek feedback from peers or experts to improve your overall presentation.

What role do visuals play in differentiating a good design v/s bad design PPT?

In a good presentation, visuals support and clarify key points. While in a bad one, they may be excessive, distracting, or irrelevant, overshadowing the main message.

How important is the audience's experience in determining the quality of a PowerPoint presentation?

The audience’s experience is essential in evaluating a presentation. A good PPT keeps the audience engaged and attentive compared to a bad PPT, which leads to disengagement and confusion.

How can I fix my bad PowerPoint presentation?

You can fix your PowerPoint presentation by opting SlideUpLift as your presentation buddy. With over 40,000+ PowerPoint Templates and Google Slides Themes to explore, you can choose what’s best for you. In case you have very specific presentation needs, you can opt for their presentation design services or custom slide service to create stunning PPTs. Schedule a call to know more.

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7 PowerPoint mistakes that are killing your presentation

By Paul Moss

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A few careless powerpoint mistakes can dramatically impact both the effectiveness and professionalism of your presentation..

Over the course of my career in consulting and strategy (and as a PowerPoint instructor for those industries), I’ve seen a lot of slides – great slides, terrible slides, and everything in-between. And what I’ve come to learn is that there’s a handful of common PowerPoint mistakes that many people don’t realize are hurting their presentation.

In this post I’m going to talk about the mistakes I see most often. I’ll give some basic examples of each mistake, explain why it hurts the presentation, and show you what you should be doing instead.

For the list, I’ll mostly be focusing on corporate style presentations, like what you’re likely to see day to day in the business world, but many of the lessons can be applied to other types of presentations as well.

If you’re interested in learning more about how to build your own high-quality PowerPoint slides, make sure you check our our advanced courses.

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Table of Contents

1. Complicated Visualizations

Your job as a slide creator is to make it as easy as possible for the audience to understand your message, and unnecessarily complicated visuals don’t help you do that. Instead, they just confuse the audience. 

In this slide from Muckerlab there is a simple sales funnel on the left, with various sales channels on the right. With enough time I can figure out the message, but it’s a bit challenging for my brain to map sales channels to the various stages of the funnel.

“Ecommerce & Digital Marketing” Muckerlab, 2014

You might think that your visual is easy enough to understand, but remember that the audience hasn’t had the same amount of time to look at the slide as you have, so it’s much more difficult for them to grasp the key takeaway quickly. 

In the slide below from Edelman there are four different charts, but each one is communicating the same type of information. By mixing up the chart style like this it makes the slide overly complicated. Instead of showing four simple column charts, they’ve forced the audience to understand and interpret each type independently. This just makes it harder for the audience to grasp the key takeaways of the slide.

“Global Deck” Edelman Trust Barometer, 2012

Instead, ask yourself, what’s the key takeaway of the slide, and how does my chart or graphic help support that key takeaway. Avoid trying to make yourself look smart, and instead figure out the simplest way to communicate the idea you’re trying to communicate. 

This slide from Credit Suisse is a great example of keeping the chart simple and clear. It’s just a normal-looking stacked column chart with easy to read data labels, a clear background, and a simple takeaway. The result is an effective and professional looking slide that’s easy for the audience to understand. 

“Analyst and Investor Call” Credit Suisse, 2022

2. Simple Titles

The point of a title on a slide is to get a quick summary of the slide’s main takeaway, so the audience can better read and understand the details.

In this slide from BCG for example, the title says “Rising housing costs may be driving creatives out of the city”. So naturally, the audience is going to skim through the content looking for evidence of rising housing costs and creatives leaving the city, which makes for more effective delivery. (

“Melbourne as a Global Cultural Destination” BCG. For more BCG content be sure to check out our full BCG slide breakdown

But unfortunately, many titles aren’t this descriptive. Instead what I see are titles that tell me the topic of the slide and nothing else . I get an idea of what the slide is about, but I’m forced to come up with my own takeaway.

“Fixed Income Investor presentation” Credit Suisse, 2022

You see this especially on slides with summaries of data, like this slide from Salesforce about its finances. But even on these slides it’s usually a good idea to put a takeaway in the title.

“Finance Update Q4 FY21” Salesforce

In this example from Orsted , they’ve shown some annual financial data, but they’ve also summarized what they want the audience to take away from the slide – that they are in line with expectations. 

“Investor presentation Q4 and full-year 2020” Orsted, 2021

By including a full sentence for your title, ideally one that summarizes the main takeaway of the slide, you make it much easier for the audience to understand what it is you’re trying to tell them.  

3. Default PowerPoint Designs

The third mistake I see more often than I’d like is using default PowerPoint designs. The worst case of this is using old slide themes, like in this example. Anyone who has spent any amount of time in PowerPoint recognizes this design, and aesthetics aside, it just looks like the slide was thrown together last minute. 

“First 30 Days” Markstar, 2017

You certainly don’t want to overdesign your slide, but at the very least try to avoid the out-of-the-box designs PowerPoint provides for you. Many of these designs haven’t changed in years, and usually they’re meant for a different kind of presentation (like a school project). 

And the same goes for PowerPoint shapes, graphics, and even colors. They all come across as unprofessional and overused, so it’s in your best interest to avoid them altogether.  

But where I think this is most easy to mess up is with tables. A table like this for example looks fine enough, but with just a few tweaks it can be made to look significantly better.

In this example, all I did was bold the titles, turn the negative values red, left align the first column and right align the others, make the top line extra thick, then add other lines to separate the regions. The result is a much better looking, and much easier to read table. 

When it comes to design, even just a little bit of extra effort can help you avoid cliche, unprofessional looking slides.

4. Unrelated Content

In corporate style presentations, it’s completely okay to have lots of content, so long as each piece of content has a purpose. What I see way too often is stuff that’s just there to fill space, and doesn’t have an actual purpose. 

In this Starboard Value slide , there are a lot of unnecessary distractions. For example, the box at the bottom is really just a repeat of what’s in the subtitle. Likewise, there’s a lot of text in the bullet points that could be trimmed down or eliminated without changing the message of the slide. It would help the audience focus more on the key takeaways, without getting distracted by all the fluff. 

“Transforming Darden Restaurants” Starboard Value, 2014 See our full breakdown of this slide here .

But what bothers me the most is the picture at the bottom, which really isn’t adding to the slide in any meaningful way. Yes, it’s on topic – the slide is about breadsticks after all – but it’s not giving me any useful information. We all know what breadsticks look like, and this doesn’t help me understand the key takeaway any better. 

Pictures are typically the most common culprit when it comes to unrelated content. It can be really tempting to throw a picture on a slide to fill up the extra space – especially if that picture looks professional and seems to loosely match the topic of the slide. 

Even McKinsey is guilty of this sometimes, as in this example . The picture looks great, but it doesn’t help the audience understand the main message of the slide about digital manufacturing being a high priority for a majority of companies. Instead, it just distracts the audience. 

“Moving Laggards to Early Adopters” McKinsey & Co., 2018 Learn more about how McKinsey designs data heavy PowerPoint slides.

In this example from a different presentation, they kept the slide fairly simple, with only information that supports the main takeaway of the slide, and nothing else. The result is a clear and easy to understand slide with a well-supported takeaway. 

“Capturing the full electricity potential of the U.K.” McKinsey & Co., 2012

So when you’re adding content to your slide, whether that’s a picture, chart, or anything else, make sure it contributes to the message in some way. And if it doesn’t then just leave that part blank and adjust the other parts of the slide accordingly. 

5. Distracting Backgrounds

This is related to the last mistake about unrelated content but is important in and of itself. A bad background can completely ruin a presentation. At best it’s distracting, but at worst it looks horribly unprofessional and makes the content hard to look at. 

Once again this is where PowerPoint is to blame. Some of the default backgrounds make it almost impossible to read the text, especially if that text doesn’t provide any contrast.

But even simple backgrounds can be distracting, as in our previous example from Starboard Value . Shading the background makes it difficult for my eyes to know where to focus my attention. Not to mention it makes some of the text slightly harder to read. 

Even subtle text or images in the background can be distracting, as in this BCG example . 

“Projecting US Mail volumes to 2020” BCG, 2010

The general rule of thumb with backgrounds is if you notice it, you should change it. The idea is you want to reduce the number of distractions on your slide so that the audience can focus on the insights. In that regard, you can almost never go wrong with a plain white background. This keeps the audience focused on your content, and ultimately on your message. 

This slide from Accenture is a great example of a non-distracting background that keeps the emphasis on the content. Nothing is diverting my attention and I can focus on what they’re trying to tell me. 

“Fintech New York: Partnerships, Platforms and Open Innovation” Accenture, 2015

But of course, the background doesn’t always have to be white. Sometimes darker backgrounds work better for longer, live presentations, especially when those presentations are given on a large screen. 

In another example from later in the presentation, Accenture uses a darker blue background that’s simple, clear, and professional. And most importantly, it doesn’t take my attention away from the content on the slide. 

6. Not Guiding the Audience

Most modern business presentations are full of text and data, which can make it difficult for the audience to process the information on a slide and see the key insights . In a live presentation, it is even more difficult – the audience has to simultaneously listen to the speaker, read through the content on the slide, and think critically about the information. 

The easy way to manage this challenge is to guide the audience through your slide with visual cues – things like text, callouts, and boxes. Unfortunately, it is something that many people just don’t think to do.  What this leads to is dense, difficult to read slides , as in these two examples:

“Bridging the Gap Between CIO and CMO” Isobar, 2014

“Transforming Darden Restaurants” Starboard Value, 2014

And the same thing can happen with charts . By just putting up a chart with no real commentary or guidance, you make it hard for the audience to understand what it is you’re trying to tell them. 

“Fifth Assessment Report- Synthesis Report” IPCC, 2014

In many ways, this is the counterpoint to the last mistake. Whereas you don’t want unimportant pieces like your background to be distracting, you do want the important parts of your slide to be distracting, because it helps the audience quickly grasp the key takeaways. 

Returning to our Accenture example, notice how they’ve used bolded text to help call attention to what’s important. Likewise, they’ve also used a line to put emphasis on the title of the slide. 

Check out our full breakdown of this slide here .

This BCG slide has quite a bit of information on it, but they’ve made it easy to work through by drawing the most attention to the title with green font and large text, then the next amount of attention to the subtitles with bold black text and green lines underneath, and then the least amount of attention to the bullet points. It helps the process the information on the slide in the way they want them to – starting with the highest level idea, and working their way through the details. 

“Evaluating NYC media sector development and setting the stage for future growth” BCG, 2012

This chart from McKinsey is another good example of guiding the audience.  Instead of just keeping the chart plain, they’ve added callouts that help emphasize the message in the title. 

“Jobs lost, jobs gained: Workforce transitions in a time of automation” McKinsey, 2017

Guiding the audience can be as simple as adding an arrow or bolding important text. But even small changes like this can make a big difference in your presentation. 

7. Too Many Colors

It can be tempting to use a variety of colors on your slide, but doing so just distracts the audience and takes attention away from the important parts. And not only that, it can look really unprofessional. 

On this slide for example they’ve decided to separate each of these sections by color to make it easier to distinguish between them. But instead of making it easier to read, the slide is difficult to understand and hard to look at. The sections are already naturally separated, with lines, titles, and even icons. But by adding bright colors, in addition to the orange and green that’s already on the slide, they’ve reduced the slide’s readability considerably. 

“Harnessing the Power of Entrepreneurs to Open Innovation” Accenture, 2015

The best slides use color strategically, to help highlight key points and ideas.

In this Bain slide for example, they’ve decided to highlight the important columns in red, while keeping the less important columns in grey. It provides a nice contrasting effect that helps emphasize the message. 

“2011 China Luxury Market Study” Bain, 2011

Likewise, this Deloitte slide contains a minimal amount of color, making it easy to sift through the data and focus on only what’s important. Not to mention it keeps the visuals of the slide clean and professional. 

“Consumer privacy in retail” Deloitte, 2019

It’s a bit counterintuitive, but when it comes to color, sometimes less is more.

Final Thoughts

A few simple tweaks to your presentation can really make a difference in both its quality and overall professionalism. Above all, be sure to focus on your main message, and avoid any distractions that might take away from that message. If you can keep an eye out for cliché, unprofessional, and meaningless content, you’ll be well on your way to creating high-quality, insight-rich presentations.

P.S. – If you’re really looking to up your PowerPoint game, be sure to check out our full courses: Advanced PowerPoint for Consultants and Advanced Presentations for Consultants .

You can watch a video version of this article on YouTube .

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15 Pro Tips to Design a Good (Vs Bad) PowerPoint (That Doesn't Suck)

Over who years, PowerPoint has gained a badewanne reputation. There's even ampere trending hashtag #DeathbyPowerPoint on Twitter and Instagram. Mystery? There are hundred of bad PowerPoint presentation examples that walk a tiny like this presentation:

Don't let your next PowerPoint presentation fall dupe to one away several missteps. All collection of tips with experts will set you on the right path. Learn how to avoid death by PowerPoint by following aforementioned go Bauer design tips includes this article. 

Good PowerPoint presentations can live a greatness way to connect through your destination audience and improve your bottom line. Bad Presentation slides are easier to avoid than you should think.

Into this books, we’ll share what manufacture a bad PowerPoint presentation. You'll also lern reason you should avoid making people sit through one at all costs. Then, we'll give thee a handful of side from the showcase pros that'll help you design a good PowerPoint . Best of all, you'll learn select to avoid terminal at PowerPoint.

What Constructs a "Bad" PowerPoint Presentation?

As rudeness as he might sound, in most cases, PowerPoint isn't the main reason behind a bad presentation. After all, Output is just a tool. It's utilised to form greatly slides, and it's also used to create  bad  Point slides.

On Envato authors have designed hundred of PowerPoint templates. According to their specialization, to main reason for bad PowerPoint presentations is design-related.

Slide design with poor layout that uses characters and colors that detract from the message on the decline is one of the main reasons why PowerPoint receives such a bad reputation . 

A classic mistakes to PowerPoint slideshow design is in include tables much information over a single slide. Take a viewing at this presentation on Lung Ovarian  from SlideShare. Not all will you find informational overwhelm, but they also decided to add 100 charts on one slide!

A couple of other reason that lead to poor PowerPoint presentations contains:

• a topic that's got nothing into do are your audience’s interest
• failing to make a connection with their audience
• reading directly from the slides

Envato author, Celsius Shapes , recommends paypal bonus attention to the view and how out the presentation on the paper before going into PowerPoint and creating of finalized how. They also suggest studying effective presentations online.

Another team of our Envato authors, AQR Studio , says that every bad presentation they perceived had the same thing inbound common:

"...too much text on individual slides and bad layout." 

Their advice is go take one look at presentation templates built by professionals and study them to find common elements is make by an attractive video. Few also make adding in to own style instead of copying someone else’s.

Lastly, don’t forgetting that nerves and knowing your viewers plays an important role in your feature delivery as well. According to Dave Beckett , an TEDx discourse coach,

“[...]two major grounds for poor presentations: nerves, and not paying enough attention to the audience.”

Now that you know get makes a bad Point presentation, let’s about how you should avoid making your audience sit through it.

Why a Bad Output Presentation Hurts Your Message

A bad presentation will not only quit a sour fondness in your mouth, but it'll also bore your audience. Once insert community gets boring, chances are they'll disengage from the presentation. They'll stop remunerative attention to what you've got to say (also common sarcastically as death via PowerPoint). Reports, Books & Periodicals · Unmuted: What works, what doesn't real whereby were can all do better when working together online. · Storytelling as Best Practice (PDF).

Also, just your audience becomes disengaged, chances are they won’t remembering aforementioned topic, much smaller the content of your how. If you’re presenting in front in potential business company or investors, him run the risks of nay closing of deal or getting the necessary funding. Good Lecture VS Bad Presentation * - YouTube

Ultimately, a bad presentation will result in a bad impression of your brand and business. Luckily, we’ve cumulated the best PowerPoint design tips by the experts that'll help you created good PowerPoint presentations also avoid death by PowerPoint.

15 Tips von Professionals to Compose Health PowerPoint Presentations

None matter how experienced you have, the truth is, bad PowerPoint presentations can happen to anyone. Evened proven speech busses aren’t immune to delivering bad presentations.

Consider this story from Michel Mazur, speech coach from  Communication Rebel :

“Once EGO was invited to give one presentation on cultural trends. I worked closely with the meeting planner. In fact, she approved every scroll I was going to offer. This was an executive-level audience additionally she wanted the contents to may perfect. I research, I prepped, I practiced, I had great view.  

Five daily into my performance, one leading raised his help and asked “Are these trends based on quantitative research?” My reply was, “No, they belong qualitative cultural trends.” He real half the room tune away. One presentation flopped. My mistake was basing my whole speech on information away the person. That go killed me and there made no way to save the presentation in aforementioned moment...

I recovered. You can too when your presentation sucks. The most important point is: Keep Speaking. Learn from your mistakes both don't let them hold you back.”

As Dr. Mazur says, and good news a is you can recover from a bad presentation and go on to successfully establish good PowerPoints that don’t suck. Below, you’ll locate 15 hint from which specialist that'll help you rock your PowerPoint engineering press your presentations skills. This view shows a student giving equally a vile additionally a good presentation, he uses constructive feedback for improve his presentation skills.

1. Graphics for Visual Aid

Bad PowerPoint slides are overflowed, wordy, and boring. They lose point of the focus of one Byer presentation. Remember, your goal is to present informational in clear, understandable ways. By adding graphics for visual aid, you can do exactly which. For example, consider infographics. These is illustrations built to share ideas.

Tend than packing a slide with words to explain an concept, map it out with an infographic. This might be ampere process flow chart, or a 3D hierarchy diagram. In fact, premium infographic templates from Envato Elements offer many of options. Start one such works well for your topic, then fall stylish your details.

2. Stick to Readable Fonts

Top examples of vicious PowerPoint pictures often share something in gemeinsamer: strange fonts . Sure, unique fonts can be fun and funny. When they don’t have a place in a expert decline deck. It’s bad PowerPoint vordruck to use this fonts.

Alternatively, you need to choose a clear, stylish font that’s easy at reader. Remember, audiences might will reading your slides from the back of a large place.

This doesn’t mean fonts have to be boring. Far from it - and again, Envato Elements is here to related. As a member, you've got zugriff to thousands of custom font styles with unlimited related.

Each neat will works inbound your Presentation. Avoid becoming an example of bad Point form plus choose a premium custom font today! They look great press help yourself succeed.

3. Consistency Is Key

The number one tip for your Show design can to be consistent. This simply refers go using the same fonts and colors throughout thine presentation instead of changing them up every additional foil. Mystery Bad Presentations Happen to Good Causes

It’s a good idea to use the same characters and colors applied in which resting of your type assets. But if you aren’t sure which colors and changing are a part of your brand identity, you can’t go wrong with keeping it simply. Most likely, your featured will feel stiff and not very appealing. After all, timing is a great part of become an successful presenter. bad ...

Speakers and originator Dude Culver is verify that simplicity works:

“A consistent theme pulls together the variety in your images and message, as you move from problem at solution. You ability use the baked-in themes supplied in PowerPoint or Keynote – MYSELF don’t due I want a simpler, more unique look.

I create a custom theme simple with my titles, a consistent white background, and sometimes with my download or my client’s logo.”

4. When A Comes up Text, Less Is Always More

As mentioned earlier, too much text wishes defeat your audience. Another downside of using furthermore much text is that your audience becomes read the content of the slide before you’re done talking about it and then tune you out. A Bad Presentation Walked Good.

TEDx in-house presentation expert, Aaron Weyenberg , makes an excellent argument for using without texts in your PowerPoints:

“With text, less is almost always more. One thing to avoid—slides with a lot of copy, especially if it’s a repeat of where you’re adage out loud. It’s like if to give a hard manual in ampere meeting—everyone’s head leaves down press few read, rather than staying heads-up and listening. If there are a lot of words on your slide, you’re asking your audience to teilung their attention between what they’re learning and what they’re hearing. That’s really hard for an brain to do, furthermore it compromises the effectiveness of both your slide text and your language words. Supposing you can’t avoid having text-y slides, try to progressively exposed text (like unveiling bullet points one by one) as you need it.”

5. How the Presentation as an Aid, Not this Main Tool

Don’t forget is you, the show, are the star of the presentation. Your presentation is there to reinforce your ideas and help you sell your point. Take advice from  Seth Godin :

“[...]make slides the reinforce your words, not repeat them. Create video that demonstrate, with emotional proof, that what you’re statement is true non just accurate.”

6. Use Guides into Make Sure Everything Aligns Properly

PowerPoint experts from Nuts and Seals Speedtraining firmly believe you must add guidance to your slides.

“When creating a document in PowerPoint, add guides around the placeholders from the parent slide layout.

That way if you inadvertently made an faults or if you want to makes things easier to align in the normal view, then you can just flip those on again plus see where everything is supposed to be placed.”

7. Contrast Always Wins

Bad PowerPoint presentation examples don’t stand out. They’re rigid to follow, both in style and delivery. Them need your slides go stand out to succeed. Here are some examples of the best and worst PowerPoint presentations you must consider. Glance over these good v/s bad PowerPoint declines examples to enhance your next presentation.

Contrast can autochthonous best design best to do exactly that. By styling about contrast, thine key ideas wills be instantly recognizable.

They’ll never fade into the background. This keeps your audience focused and engaged. Plus, it looks great. To is crucial to remember.

You slides los beyond real-time watching while you’re presenting. They need in be styling and comprehensive on later too.

8. Memorize the Concepts & an Scripts

Inc.500 entrepreneur and speaker, Qifen Daum saith you should memorize both your presentation index and script. Memorizing your script and the concept also helps in rechtssache there have technical difficulties with your presentation.

“Audiences know one amateur which second the notes kommenden output or the presenter looks at who screen as a reminders. This is your material. If you don't build it, you can't expect that audience to appreciation you as on expert.”

9. Use Relevant Imagery

There is no doubt that images and visual elements can boost your presentation or produce it even other impactful. But those images and various visuals need to be relevant. Depending to visual communications expert, Curtis Newbold :

“You may, for instance, need to give a powerpoint on dairy production inbound your community.[...]What I need to see are images that teller a story about the dieting industries the his challenging, the infographics that explain processes in surmounting the hurdle. You need one lot of visionary information, yes. But it also your to be relevant.”

10. One Message Per Slide

Your presentation needs into pique curiosity in your audience and get them interested by the topic. Once you've got their attention, you need to keep it and the best way the do that is go stick to sole send per slide.

Professional training and coaching expert Dave JP Phillips even goes so far to set presenters should focus on one key message per slide and include no learn easier six object (or lines) on apiece.

11. Use Animation Carefully

Animation can certainly make a good PowerPoint model more dynamic, but only when used correctly. Otherwise, it’s a distraction that can ruin the impression regarding the presentation. Learn away St Schroth , PowerPoint expert:

“Like adenine lot of other PowerPoint characteristic, animation sack be distracting if used badly. However, if employed rationally, animation bottle snap your audience's attention at business score, allow you to "chunk" information for better comprehension, and help explain advanced systems and relationships. After entire, we are "wired" to pay heed at movement.”

Studying the basics of use video:

12. Pay Attention at the Structure

Your presentation needs to have a good flow. It’s important to include any who needed elements supposing you want your presentation to be convince. More specificly, a right presentation resembles a point production, according into leadership development and executive coaching expert Jeff Black .

“You have the have all and elements: You’ve got to have a major opening act, you’ve got to got something in the middle to pull it through and you’ve got to have a great curtain’s finale along the end.”

13. Practice Exists the Key to Success

Don’t forget to practice, practice, and then practice some more the delivery of your presentation. Nancy Duarte , the author of Resonate , shares get as herb finest advice for new presenters:

“Nothing payoff is lightweight, also the best communicators aren’t always born that way. Many of them saw to importance of improving their skills and put the work in. It will be work. But if you become an golden communicator, insert life is in your hands.”

Students some values tips for practicing your presentation:

14. Build to Online Sharing

Learn about online-focused slide decks, and look at some of the best templates now:

15. Build Presentations to Engage

Samples of poorer Show slides may carry many forms. Not her all tend to bore an community. Maybe they’re overloaded with content, hard into understand, or just aren’t interesting. That’s why you should always engage with autochthonous audience. This semester I'm teaching three classes on presentation for undergrads at i university in Japan. For the second day, I have students share from the teaching what they ponder are the elements of adenine good presentation both what it think...

This could take many forms. If nothing or, always contains a Q&A plate at the end of your deck. This gives my audience the chance to clarify anything handful might’ve lost. Aforementioned difference between an good and bad presentation is ENORMOUS

With even get option is to be engaging or interactive throughout. By using a game button quiz, you can make presentations fun! And a happy community is forever a find busy audience. Providing a bad video - spot the mistakes - YouTube

Learn show about interactive quiz games PowerPoints from the help of this tutorial:

How to Quickly Customize Good PowerPoint Designs (With Premium Templates)

Want to know aforementioned ultimate way in avoid badezimmer PowerPoint slides? Two terms: awards presets.

By using a premium Envato Elements Show template , you can amaze any audience. Elements got thousands a amazing options present now.

Premium templates offering stunning styles, unlike free templates. Plus, they rescue you time thanks to their ease by use. In fact, your can customize one in just five quick stair. Let’s look at how. Examples the Good and Bad Slides - Download than a PDF or review go for free

What to follow along and teach more? Downloading the great Virtually PowerPoint template  from Envato Elements now.

1. Please Your Key Slithers

Bad PowerPoint examples are oft congested with dozens of slides in a row. Steady that most fascinating topics will eventually lose into audience if they draft on too long. That’s why you should choose only an very key slides to get your points across. Show of Good and Bad Slides

This is easy to a premium template in PowerPoint. Find an View tab, then click on Slide Sorter. Here, you’ll see a thumbnail for every slide by the deck. You can remove unwanted slides by right-clicking on them and select Delete Slide . Once you’re finishes, clickable Normal with the View tab to start editing.

2. Edit Text Features

Words are the backbone of gain PowerPoint decks. And thanks to premium templates, they’re easy to add. Notice wie slide layouts have text already in place. To change it going, click into one von the text box. Select the contents, then type over they using your keyboard. Repeat throughout your carriage deck. Notice how good your presentation skills are by spotting of errors made to this video.

Keep in mind: bad Powered presentation product have often too wordy. Avoid this by deleting any unwanted text boxes to free upwards some space on autochthonous slides.

3. Explore Font Effects

Single you’ve added textbook, you can customize it. Go to the Home title on PowerPoint’s ribbon furthermore detect the Font section on the left. Here, you’ll see many my the dropdowns.

The dropdowns power which size or style concerning your font. The buttons drive custom effects like underlines, fonts, and more. Click through them plus watch your choices apply to an text that you have selected. Bad PowerPoint Examples You Should Prevent at All Costs

4. Customize Photos

Any exemplar of bad PowerPoint technique: ampere lacks of representations. Don’t forget to add figures toward regular intermittent. Those boost visual interest or hold viewers and textbooks focusing off thou.

Premium templates, once again, make this slight. On many image, you’ll see shaped image placeholders. Browse to a stored image file for will computer, then towing it over your slide.

Drop it into place, and watch PowerPoint import it. Reference it'll scale to fit perfectly. It’s an effortless way at build a good PowerPoint slide.

5. Style Molds with Color

A poorer PowerPoint deck often will deficiency in color and choose. A bland aesthetic shall ampere rapidly way up lose an audience. That’s why the use of color exists so important. Press one premium template enjoy Virtually makes create use of color.

You can also change shape colors inbound PPT to how your own style. Pawl on a frame, then find the Shape Format tab on the palm. On it, you’ll see the Mold Fill dropdown color chooser. Explore the numerous options also click one to apply it. This is one of one top ways to build a great slide layout with plenty of cool colors. 

Find Even More Good PowerPoint Examples

If you're test for make a PowerPoint that doesn't suck, you'll want plenty of good PowerPoint examples for stimulus. Here become couple good PowerPoint designing to rouse you: Activity for talking about good (and bad) presentations

The Top Source for Great PowerPoint Templates (To Build Ok Presentations)

Want the best source for wonderful PowerPoint stencil? Envato Tree is thy answer. For a flat months rate, you’ll have access to boundless downloads out an world’s best Powerful templates . These help them make great slides every day. Plus, you’ll find misc company love stock photos, customize fonts, and much more.

Elements is the top creative value today. The unlimited downloads included grant you boundless possibilities. You can try out as many breathtaking Show designing as you want to find and one that’s right on you.

Envato Elements assist you build great Powered slides. It avoids the pitfalls of bad PowerPoint shapes. That’s because every template shall drafted due original experts. You’ll benefit starting:

• pre-built script placeholders
• room for images and illustrations
• custom infographics to illustrate dates
• unique fonts used throughout
• animated options for smooth transitions

As you can see, Elements templates saving you from edifice bad PowerPoint video. In moments, you ability build amazing graphics that listeners will adore.

Check Out Our Free Online Presentation Guide

Do you want to learn straight more about making great PowerPoint presented? We've receive the resource for you! We'll make you through the comprehensive process to get you ready for your following business presentation—from start to finish. A short simple video of okay and bad examples a presence. Enjoyed? Share aforementioned movie with your friends! Kindly credit when using the ...

Don't overlook our release online featured guide, The Complete Guide to Making Great Business Presentations . It's chock full von mighty business presentation advice to help you make your next business presentation your best yet.

Avoid Making PowerPoints The Suck By Applying These Pro Pointers

Death by PowerPoint is a real thing is can happen to anyone. If you want to make sure is your lecture walk a positive impact, keep diese tips in mind. Huge content and stellar design pair jointly to help you avoid bad PowerPoint presentation samples. Follow the PowerPoint design hints or right PowerPoint examples in this feature.

If thee need a good Slide design template fork your presentation, make sure to inspect out our sites. Grab Powered browse and design away today. Both are sure in help you avoid one curse of bad PowerPoint slides!

Article Note: This post possess been modernized with entries from Robert Childdressing . Andrew  is a freelance instructor for Envato Tuts+.

9 PowerPoint Mistakes to Avoid for Perfect Presentations

It's easy to screw up your PowerPoint presentation. Let's take a look at mistakes you probably make when presenting your slideshow, and how to correct them.

Giving an effective PowerPoint presentation is an art. We've all sat through a dreadful slideshow that we couldn't wait to escape from. Whether due to a drab speaker or lousy slides, there's usually room for improvement.

The good news is you can prevent your audience from hating your next presentation! Let's review the most common mistakes people make when preparing and giving a PowerPoint presentation. Knowing these recurrent blunders gives you a leg up, and helps you nail your next important talk.

1. You Load Up Slides With Text

Perhaps the biggest mistake people make in presentations is overloading every slide with text. This detracts from your talk for several reasons. For one, people are naturally inclined to read everything on the screen. If it takes them half a minute to digest everything, they aren't listening to you during that time.

If you have too much text on a slide and advance the slideshow before someone has a chance to read through everything, they might get upset and stop paying attention to the slideshow at all. Less is more with text. Don't be afraid to use space to add emphasis to what's present, or break a particularly meaty section into two slides.

When in doubt, remember that people are either going to pay attention to your slides, or pay attention to you. If you tend towards wordiness, stick to bullet points and short phrases instead of sentences. For a rule of thumb, limit yourself to five bullet points per slide, with no more than five words per bullet point.

2. You Use Stupid Transitions

Every new version of PowerPoint includes more wacky transitions , but you shouldn't use them. Aside from being resource-intensive on weaker machines , many slide transition effects are distracting and don't add anything to your talk.

You should certainly use a transition to keep the slideshow interesting, but stick with something simple like a wipe or slide. And never, ever select the Random option since it will undoubtedly choose the wildest transition at the worst time. You don't want your audience to worry more about what transition is coming next than what you'll say next.

3. You Mix Fonts and Colors

While you don't want your slideshow to feature black Times New Roman text with a white background, it's easy to overdo it in the other direction, too. If you choose to get colorful , stick to a few colors that blend well and use them for emphasis.

The same goes for fonts. You should choose a font that's easy to read. As fancy as handwritten script looks , it's probably impossible to read if you're not standing right in front of the screen . Try to stick to one font throughout the entire presentation, and definitely don't mix fonts on the same slide!

Few colors and fonts make for solid presentations because they mean consistency. It's childish to cram as many pretty fonts and colors onto one slide as you can. It looks messy, and while Georgia font isn't too exciting, people would prefer to read your text instead of admiring how fancy it looks.

4. You Read Slides Verbatim

This one might take the prize for worst possible trait during a PowerPoint presentation. Reading your slides word for word will bore the audience, and makes you seem rigid instead of dynamic .

Remember two important notes to help with this problem. First, PowerPoint slides don't need to contain every little bit of information you're discussing. Use them as little attention-grabbers so your audience understands the current topic, but wants to listen to you explain more.

Second, your PowerPoint slides are not for your use! Your slideshow is not the presentation -- the presentation is your talk. PowerPoint slides are simply a tool you use to better communicate. You shouldn't need your slides to stay on topic. Practicing will help with this.

If you have trouble remembering what you want to say, use the notes section of each PowerPoint slide. Then when you display the slideshow, your monitor will display a snapshot of the current and next slide, along with any notes you've jotted for that slide. Stopping to turn around and look at your slides, or reading them aloud, will not effectively bring your message to the audience. Anyone in the audience could stand up and read the slide, but you know the material.

5. Your Charts Are Complex and Useless

Adding media other than text (in moderation) to a slide makes it more interesting and grabs the audience's attention. When you're representing data in the presentation, charts are an easy way to show the relevant information in one image.

Charts are great , but it's important that you don't go overboard with them. The audience won't have the patience to decipher all sorts of colors, trend lines, keys, and text. If the chart isn't self-explanatory for the average audience member, or if you can't explain it in a sentence, you need to make it less complicated .

6. Your Template Is Boring

Take the extra few minutes to find a template that fits your presentation, or even make your own if you're so inclined. While some of the built-in PowerPoint templates might seem a little generic, you'll likely find one that's sharp without being overbearing. Don't choose anything that's too wacky with all sorts of colors, but feel free to find something unique.

Black text on a white background is ugly, but white text on a black background is passable if you don't have any other options. If you need some help, check out awesome free PowerPoint templates for everyone.

7. You Minimize PowerPoint for Other Media

As great as PowerPoint is, often you have to leave the slideshow to put some other content on the screen. Maybe you want to show a relevant YouTube video or visit the company's website. While this is sometimes unavoidable, it's jarring to jump back and forth between windows, even with slick keyboard shortcuts .

That's why you should embed everything you can inside your presentation. We've shown how to embed YouTube videos inside PowerPoint and it's easy to take a screenshot of any website to paste into your slides. If you can avoid leaving the slideshow, do so for a smoother experience.

8. You Don't Remove White Space From Images

Here's a common error that only takes a few seconds to correct. Often seen in college lecture slides and the like, many folks tend to copy and paste images from a Google search into their slides. The trouble is that most of these images include an ugly white border around them, which looks amateurish.

You can remove this white border easily using a free image editor like Paint.NET . Just open the image, and use the magic wand tool to select the white space around the image. Press Delete to remove the white space, then hit File > Save As and make sure you save the image as a PNG . A PNG file makes that deleted space transparent, while JPEGs don't support transparency .

Paste the fixed image into your slideshow and it will look so much better!

9. You Don't Ensure Everyone Can See the Material

Preparation is an essential part of every presentation, but you should do more than just practice your talk. Failing to ensure that people will be able to see everything you've put together could torpedo all your work.

If you have the chance, test your slideshow in the room where you'll be speaking, on the equipment you'll use. Make sure that no graphics or text appear cut off on the projector, and test out various seats in the room to confirm that the text isn't too small from far away. This might sound excessive, but it goes a long way in producing a professional presentation.

What Presentation Mistakes Do You Hate?

PowerPoint is a relatively simple tool , but it's clearly difficult to master. From mistakes in slide creation to blunders during your talk, there's a lot that could go wrong when you're responsible for a presentation. You can improve many of these with practice, which will improve your confidence, too.

In the end, a prepared presentation can salvage poor slides. However, a lousy slideshow damages the audience's impression of you, so it's best to nail everything if you can. Using these tips, your slideshows will be cleaner, flow better, and further engage the audience! You can't ask for much more than that.

What do speakers do with PowerPoint that makes you cringe? Let us know your most hated slideshow mistakes down in the comments!

Image Credit: cunaplus via Shutterstock

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10 Common Presentation Mistakes

Avoiding common pitfalls in your presentations.

By the Mind Tools Content Team

Most of us have experienced dull, irrelevant or confusing presentations. But think back to the last really great presentation you saw – one that was informative, motivating and inspiring. Wouldn't you love to be able to present like that?

This article looks at 10 of the most common mistakes that speakers make when giving presentations. By avoiding these, you'll make your presentations stand out – for all of the right reasons, and none of the wrong ones.

Mistake 1: Not Preparing Enough

Steve Jobs was a famously inspiring speaker. His speeches may have looked effortless, but, in reality, each one took days or weeks of preparation.

Careful preparation is essential. The amount of time you spend on planning depends on your situation, but it's a good idea to start early – you can never be too well-prepared.

Proper preparation also helps you to manage presentation nerves . When you know your material inside and out, you're far less likely to feel nervous. Our presentation planning checklist and Skillbook " Even Better Presentations " can help you to plan your next event properly.

Mistake 2: Not Familiarizing Yourself With the Venue and Equipment

Imagine that your presentation starts in an hour. You arrive at the venue and, to your horror, the projector won't work with your laptop. The slides you spent hours preparing are useless. This is a disaster!

You can avoid a situation like this by taking time to familiarize yourself with the venue and available equipment at least once before your presentation.

Often, the sorts of problems that can jeopardize your presentation will be situations beyond your control, but this doesn't mean that you're helpless. Conduct a risk analysis to identify potential issues, and come up with a good "Plan B" for each one.

Mistake 3: Ignoring Your Audience

Sometimes, speakers can get so wrapped up in delivering their presentations that they forget about the needs of their audience.

Start your presentation by telling your audience what to expect. Let them know what you'll cover first, whether and when you'll stop for a break, if you'll be taking questions during the presentation, and so on.

Providing these "signposts" up front will give your audience a clear idea of what to expect, so that they can relax and concentrate on your presentation.

Mistake 4: Using Inappropriate Content

The primary purpose of any presentation is to share information with others, so it's important to consider the level you'll pitch it at.

Do some research on your audience. Why are they here? How much do they already know about your topic, and what do they most want to learn from you? It's no use giving a presentation that's so full of jargon that no one understands you. But you wouldn't want to patronize people, either.

Try to put yourself in people's shoes, to get a clearer idea about their needs and motivations. You can also greet individuals as they arrive on the day, and ask questions to get a feel for their level of knowledge. This will also help you to personalize your presentation and make a connection with each person in your audience, so that they'll be more attentive to what you say.

Mistake 5: Being Too Verbose

Short, concise presentations are often more powerful than verbose ones. Try to limit yourself to a few main points. If you take too long getting to your point, you risk losing your audience's attention.

The average adult has a 15- to 20-minute attention span. So, if you want to keep your audience engaged, stick to the point! During the planning phase, make a note of the themes you want to cover and how you want to get them across. Then, when you start filling out the details, ask yourself: "Does my audience really need to know this?"

Our articles on the 7 Cs of Communication and Communications Planning have more tips for communicating in a clear, concise way.

Mistake 6: Using Ineffective Visuals

Poor slides can spoil a good presentation, so it's worth spending time getting yours right.

We've all seen slides with garish colors, unnecessary animation, or fonts that are too small to read. The most effective presentation visuals aren't flashy – they're concise and consistent.

When choosing colors, think about where the presentation will take place. A dark background with light or white text works best in dark rooms, while a white background with dark text is easier to see in a brightly lit room.

Choose your pictures carefully, too. High-quality graphics can clarify complex information and lift an otherwise plain screen, but low-quality images can make your presentation appear unprofessional. Unless an image is contributing something, embrace the negative space – less clutter means greater understanding. Use animation sparingly, too – a dancing logo or emoji will only distract your audience.

Mistake 7: Overcrowding Text

The best rule of thumb for text is to keep it simple . Don't try to cram too much information into your slides. Aim for a maximum of three to four words within each bullet point, and no more than three bullets per slide.

This doesn't mean that you should spread your content over dozens of slides. Limit yourself to 10 slides or fewer for a 30-minute presentation. Look at each slide, story or graph carefully. Ask yourself what it adds to the presentation, and remove it if it isn't important.

Mistake 8: Speaking Incoherently

Even though we spend a significant part of the day talking to one another, speaking to an audience is a surprisingly difficult skill, and it's one that we need to practice.

If nerves make you rush through a presentation, your audience could miss your most important points. Use centering or deep breathing techniques to suppress the urge to rush. If you do begin to babble, take a moment to collect yourself. Breathe deeply, and enunciate each word clearly, while you focus on speaking more slowly.

Our article on better public speaking has strategies and tips that you can use to become a more engaging speaker. One useful technique is storytelling – stories can be powerful tools for inspiring and engaging others. Our Expert Interviews with Annette Simmons and Paul Smith have tips that you can use to tell great stories.

Mistake 9: Showing a Lack of Dynamism

Another common mistake is to freeze in one spot for the duration of your presentation.

Some presenters feel most comfortable behind the podium. Try to emulate great speakers like Steve Jobs , who moved purposefully around the stage during his presentations.

As well as working the stage, he used gestures and body language to communicate his excitement and passion for his subject. Pay attention to what your hands are doing – they're important for communicating emotion. But only use gestures if they feel natural, and avoid being too flamboyant with your arms, unless you want to make your audience laugh!

See our Expert Interview, " Winning Body Language ," to learn more about body language and what it says to your audience.

Mistake 10: Avoiding Eye Contact

Have you ever been to a presentation where the speaker spent all of their time looking at their notes, the screen, the floor, or even at the ceiling? How did this make you feel?

Meeting a person's gaze establishes a personal connection, and even a quick glance can keep people engaged. If your audience is small enough, try to make eye contact with each individual at least once.

If the audience is too large for this, try looking at people's foreheads. The individual may not interpret it as eye contact, but those sitting around them will.

It takes practice and effort to deliver a good presentation. But, if you know how to avoid the pitfalls, your presentations will be great.

Common presentation mistakes include not preparing properly, delivering inappropriate content, and speaking poorly.

Time spent on careful planning always pays dividends. Check out the venue, and familiarize yourself with equipment in advance to avoid possible problems.

Keep your content clear and concise, with visual aids to match. And make sure that you pitch it at the right level for your audience's understanding, so that your presentation doesn't patronize or bewilder.

Remember, public speaking is a performance. Practice speaking clearly with a slower pace than your normal speech to avoid "rapid-fire" delivery. Use eye contact, body language and gestures that complement your message to keep your audience engaged.

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10 Presentation Design Mistakes to Avoid (With Examples)

One of the most important aspects of a successful presentation is designing an effective slideshow. Unfortunately, it’s also a part most professionals often neglect or don’t pay attention to.

This is why most of the bad presentation designs share a pattern. They are usually made using the default PowerPoint templates. They use the same default fonts as every other presentation. They also include terrible stock photos. And try to stuff as much information as possible into a single slide.

We noticed all these mistakes and more while exploring some of the most popular presentations on SlideShare. They were slideshows with thousands and even millions of views. But, they were riddled with mistakes and flaws.

In this guide, we show you how these mistakes can be harmful as well as give you tips on how to avoid them. Of course, we made sure to include some examples as well.

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1. Adding Too Many Slides

One of the biggest mistakes you can do when designing a presentation is adding way too many slides. This not only makes your presentation unnecessarily long but it can also affect the audience’s engagement. After a few slides, your audience will surely lose interest in your presentation.

Rand Fishkin is a well-known entrepreneur in the marketing industry. This is one of his presentations that received over 100,000 views. And it features 95 slides. We believe it could’ve generated more views if he had made the presentation shorter.

A presentation with 95 slides is a bit of an overkill, even when it’s made for an online platform like SlideShare.

Solution: Follow the 10/20/30 Rule

The 10/20/30 rule is a concept introduced by expert marketer Guy Kawasaki . The rule recommends that you limit your presentation to 10 slides, lasting only 20 minutes, and using a font size of 30 points.

Even though the rule states to limit the presentation to 10 slides, it’s perfectly fine to design a 20-slide presentation or even one with 30 slides. Just don’t drag it too far.

2. Information Overload

Statistics and research data are important for backing your claims. Even in your presentations, you can include stats and data to add more validity and authority. However, you should also remember not to over-do it.

A good example is this popular SlideShare presentation with more than 1 million views. Since this is a tech report slideshow, it includes lots of stats and data. But the designer has made the mistake of trying to include too much data into every slide in the presentation.

If this slideshow were to present to a large audience at a big hall, most of the audience won’t even be able to read it without binoculars.

Solution: Visualize Stats and Data

A great way to present data is to visualize them. Instead of adding numbers and long paragraphs of text, use charts and graphs to visualize them. Or use infographics and illustrations.

3. Choosing the Wrong Colors

How long did it take for you to read the title of this slide? Believe it or not, it looks just the same throughout the entire slideshow.

The biggest mistake of this presentation design is using images as the background. Then using colors that doesn’t highlight the text made it even worse and rendered the text completely unreadable.

Solution: Create a Color Palette

Make sure that you start your presentation design by preparing a color palette . It should include primary and secondary colors that you use throughout each slide. This will make your presentation design look more consistent.

4. Using Terrible Fonts

Fonts play a key role in improving the readability in not just presentations but in all kinds of designs. Your choice of font is enough for the audience to decide whether you’re a professional or an amateur.

In this case, the slide speaks for itself. Not only the font choice is terrible but without any spacing between the paragraphs, the entire slide and the presentation is hardly readable. How did this presentation generate over 290,000 views? We’ll never know.

Solution: Avoid the Default Fonts

As a rule of thumb, try to avoid using the default fonts installed on your computer. These fonts aren’t designed for professional work. Instead, consider using a custom font. There are thousands of free and premium fonts with great designs. Use them!

5. Adding Images from Google

You could tell by just looking at this slide that this person is using images from Google search. It looks like the designer lazily downloaded images from Google search and copy-pasted a screenshot onto the image. Without even taking the time to align the screenshot to fit the device or removing the white background of the image.

Or he probably added a white background to the images after realizing the black iPhone blends into the black background. Most of the images used throughout this slideshow are pretty terrible as well.

Solution: Use High-Quality Mockups and Images

The solution is simple. Don’t use images from Google! Instead, use high-quality images from a free stock image site or use a premium source. Also, if you want to use devices in slides, make sure to use device mockup templates .

6. Poor Content Formatting

There are many things wrong with this slideshow. It uses terrible colors with ugly fonts, the font sizes are also too big, uneven shapes, and the list goes on.

One thing to remember here is that even though apps like PowerPoint and Keynote gives you lots of options for drawing shapes and a color palette with unlimited choices, you don’t have to use them all.

Solution: Use a Minimal and Consistent Layout

Plan a content layout to be used with each and every slide of your presentation. Use a minimalist content layout and don’t be afraid to use lots of white space in your slides. Or, you can use a pre-made PowerPoint or Keynote template with a better design.

7. Writing Long Paragraphs

Adding long paragraphs of text in slides is never a good way to present your ideas to an audience. After all, that’s what the speech is for. The slides, however, need to be just a summary of what you’re trying to convince your audience.

Don’t make the mistake of writing long paragraphs that turns your slideshow into a document. And, more importantly, don’t read from the slides.

Solution: Keep It Short

As the author Stephen Keague said, “no audience ever complained about a presentation or speech being too short”. It takes skill to summarize an idea with just a few words. You should always try to use shorter sentences and lots of titles, headings, and bullet points in your slideshows.

8. Not Using Images

This entire presentation doesn’t have a single image in any of its slides, except for the company logo. Images are a great way to keep your audience fully engaged with your presentations. Some expert speakers even use images to add humor as well.

The saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” is popular for a reason. Instead of writing 200-words long paragraphs, use images to summarize messages and also to add context.

Solution: Use Icons, Illustrations, and Graphics

You don’t always have to add photos or images to make your presentations look more attractive. Instead, you can use other types of graphics and colorful icons. Or even illustrations and infographics to make each slide more entertaining.

9. Designing Repetitive Slides

This presentation about Internet Trends is one of the most popular slideshows on SlideShare with more than 4 million views. If you go through the slides you’ll notice the entire presentation is filled with nothing but charts and graphs.

Your audience will easily get bored and lose attention when your presentation has too many slides containing the same type of content.

Solution: Use a Mix of Content

Make sure to use different types of content throughout the slides. Add text, images, shapes, icons, and other elements to create each slide more engaging than the other.

10. Using Complex Infographics

Even though images and graphics are great for visualizing data, it’s important to use the right designs to showcase the data without confusing the audience.

For example, this slideshow made by HootSuite is filled with stats and data. Most of which look fine. Except for a few slides that include complicated designs filled with information all over the place.

Solution: Design Simpler Graphics

There are many great online tools you can use to design your own infographics and visuals. Use them. But, also remember to use simpler designs that are easier to understand for all audiences.

In Conclusion

There’s no such thing as the perfect presentation design. Every slideshow has its flaws. But, if you learn to avoid the common mistakes, you’ll have a much higher chance of winning over your audience and delivering a more engaging presentation.

If you don’t have any slideshow design experience, consider picking one of the bee PowerPoint templates or best Keynote templates . They feature designs made by professionals and you won’t have to worry about making any mistakes again.

Bad Presentations: How To Avoid Common Presentation Pitfalls In 2023

Table of contents.

It’s easy to make a presentation, but it’s difficult to make a good presentation.

There are simple mistakes that are made when it comes to the fine art of designing and performing a presentation if you haven’t been doing it for the past 15 years, over and over, like we have!

In this article we explore the common pitfalls most presentation designers/presenters make , and how you can avoid them.

What Impact Can A Bad Presentation Have?

Bad presentations and good presentations have something in common, they’re memorable. Whether it’s a speech at a wedding, or pitching to investors, if it’s bad, it stands out.

The impact a bad presentation can have on your, your business or your brand is profound. It’s more than just the performance on the day. In today’s world, everyone is connected and people talk. It’s difficult to shift your image if you make the wrong impression.

Below are just a few hurdles you can expect to face if your presentation bombs.

Loss Of Confidence In You Or Your Company

When you have or give a bad presentation, it’s easy for your audience to lose confidence in you. After all, at that moment in time, you’re the face of the company and a direct representation of who you represent.

If you drop the ball, that’s what your audience is going to expect you to do if they decide to partner with you. How can they do business or trust in you if they don’t have confidence in you.

Fortunately, we understand how much hard work, time, and dedication it takes just to get the opportunity to deliver a presentation to your audience, your clients, your investors, or your own company. Which is why our presentation design services will help take care of the visual and organizational side of your slides.

We Can Make You Look Goood!

You Can Develop A Negative Reputation

Ineffective presentations are a waste of time, and as we all know, time is valuable. Simple things like unpreparedness, lack of audience engagement, talking too much, a poorly structured or visual presentation design.

These things DO NOT go unnoticed and you will develop a reputation that will most certainly work against you professionally. It takes a lot more work to repair damage that it does to put your best foot forward in the first place.

Slower Business Growth

If your presentation misses out on the key points and the words you’ve chosen for your slides are poor, you will experience slower business growth as there is less information for your audience about your brand. If they are missing out on the key idea because your slides are too simple, they won’t want to buy into your brand.

Here Are The Most Common Mistakes You Can Make With Your Presentation

There’s common mistakes that are both easy to make and easy to avoid if you know what you are looking for. There are common mistakes presenters make because most presentations have too much information, pictures and the information that you as the presenter are trying to communicate gets lost in the jumble of the presentation.

Talking Too Much About Yourself

Presenters who spend too much time speaking about themselves while they present is one example of a common mistake. The audience members want the informative information about your brand, not the informative information about you as the speaker.

Focusing Too Much On Facts And Not Storytelling

You want to engage your audience by using both facts and storytelling to sell them on your brand. If you focus too much on facts, it’s the worst thing you can do for your presentation because you’ll quickly lose your audience’s attention.

Poorly Designed Visual Aids

Visual aids are important to making a great presentation, but not if they are poorly designed. It’s important to have engaging visual aids, dark text on white background is a great way to focus the audience’s attention. Make your presentation your own by choosing well designed visual aids that add to your presentation as a whole.

Disorganized Information (No Logic Or Order)

Are your slides all over the place? Your examples don’t make sense to your brand? The worst presentations are hard to follow, confusing and distracting from the main points. An audience wants to sit through an engaging presentation, and by having order and logic to your slides with words that point back to your idea, you will capture their attention and keep them captivated.

Too Much Information

If you have too many points on your slides, or paragraphs that you’ll be reading off during your presentation, you have too much information. Have less on the slides, keep to the point and spend more time talking directly to your audience rather than reading to them.

No Engagement Or Interaction

A common pitfall that is easy to fall into, is not interacting with the audience members, by making eye contact, allowing time for questions or asking questions to the audience. They are sitting right in front of you (Physically or Virtually) so interact with them right from the beginning so they expect it throughout the presentation. If you need some tips on how to make a presentation interactive , we’ve got you covered.

If you’re looking for a few tips on, this article on being a better presenter can help.

Reading Directly From Your PowerPoint Presentation

When you read directly from the PowerPoint Presentation, your body language is not open to the audience, and it means that you aren’t engaging with either the material or your listeners. If you spend time in preparation and writing out what you will be saying, you can speak directly to the audience and portray confidence in your brand. By purposefully making eye contact, you are connecting with those who are listening to you.

Ending The Presentation Abruptly

When you finish your talk and forget to allow time for questions, you are sending a message that you don’t care about the audience’s understanding of the material you have presented. All it takes is one slide to finish a presentation well and leave space for the audience to ask questions.

Animation Overload

When you overload on animation, you make your presentation look cheap and distracting from your important points. It’s an easy way to make ineffective presentations, as it’s distracting to the main goal of your presentation. Keep animations to a minimum and bullet points on your slides instead to create engaging presentations.

So Is A Bad Presentation Worth The Risk?

Don’t talk too much about yourself, but tell stories about your brand so the audience can connect with you as the presenter and your company. You want to engage with the audience through well chosen visual aids, and keep order to your information both in your slides and your speech. Don’t overload in cheap looking animations and always leave room for your audience to ask questions at the end.

It’s best to be prepared, put our best foot forward and invest the time/money in making sure you’re well rehearsed and have some kick ass slides to back you up. Effort and intent are noticed, as long as they’ve been put it.

Are You In Need Of A Good Presentation To Give The Right Impression?

Your slides are more than just beautiful graphics, they’re opportunities for you to share your stories/ideas. Leave the PowerPoint, Prezi, Google Slides to us and focus on nailing the public speaking part!

Just click the button below and get the conversation started today! We’re here to support you, so connect with a Presentation Geek and take the first step towards a presentation that blows your competition out of the water.

Author:  Content Team

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• Five Paragraph Essay
• IMRaD (Science)
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• BRANCHES OF ORATORY
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• Information Design Rules
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• “P” is for PREPARE
• "O" is for OPEN
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Top 12 Most Annoying PowerPoint Presentation Mistakes

PowerPoint has gotten a bad rap over the years. In fact, during graduate school, my program director actually told us at one point that we couldn’t use PowerPoint for our comprehensive exams (which is an oral presentation in front of all the faculty and students required for graduation) because PowerPoint slides were too cliche, too dull, too obnoxious, too outdated, or whatever other undesirable quality you might slap onto a digital presentation platform.

So what was the reaction? Students in my program latched onto Prezi or SlideRocket or even Wix—which is actually a web design program. And the result? Just as bad, if not worse visual presentations in many cases (trust me, Prezi doesn’t solve the world’s problems; the zoom-in, zoom-out feature has lost it’s novelty; it’s obnoxious).

The truth is, whether you use PowerPoint or Prezi or anything else, you can’t blame the software for the presentation. PowerPoint is a tool; it isn’t content. Microsoft word doesn’t tell beautiful (or awful) stories, the author does. And so it goes with PowerPoint presentations: if you fill them with bad content and design, your presentation flies right out the window. How you mesh the digital slides and design with the content you deliver makes all the difference. Take the time to design a PowerPoint well and people won’t even realize it’s PowerPoint (which, by the way, became my challenge in graduate school; I ended up using PowerPoint for my exams and felt complimented when several asked me afterwards what program I used).

If you want to know a few tricks for designing good PowerPoint presentations, check out my Five Quick Tricks to Design Your PowerPoint Presentation . But if you just want to know what to avoid when giving a PowerPoint presentation, here’s a list of my top twelve most annoying   PowerPoint presentation mistakes . If these 12 tips aren’t enough, see my infographic on 40 Ways to Screw Up a PowerPoint Slide

#2: Bad Contrast Unless your goal is to give your audience a serious headache (which, don’t get me wrong, might occasionally be your goal), don’t use dark colored text on dark backgrounds or vice versa. The more visual contrast, the more enjoyable your slides will be to look at. Light blue on white? No. Blue on purple? No. White on yellow? You’ve got to be kidding! (But I’ve seen it, sadly, done.) Truthfully, the best contrast is black on white or white on black. If you do white on black, you’ll need to increase your font size a bit. Use color elsewhere. After all, pretty every book you’ve ever read uses white paper and black ink, correct? PowerPoints should be no different. Use color for headings, titles, and images. Not for bulk text (but you really shouldn’t have very many bulk amounts of text….) And do you want to know the biggest contrast faux pas? Don’t EVER use blue text on a red background or vice versa. Research has shown that those two colors on top of each other on a digital screen actually clashes so much, to many people the colors appear to vibrate. Now that’s a serious headache in the making!

#3: Staring at the Screen Your PowerPoint slides should be used to  supplement your presentation, not serve as a crutch. Don’t assume that having all your content on the slides means you don’t have to practice. One of the most annoying, unprofessional, and overt demonstrations of presentation slacker-ness is staring at the screen, reading your content to your audience. Even if you don’t have much text, avoid the pitfall of talking to the screen (it happens more often than you would believe). If you are shy and hate being in front of people, practice standing forward and moving your eyes to different parts of the room, but all in the vicinity of where your audience is. Look at audience members’ hands, hair, shirts. This isn’t as good as eye contact, but it is a whole lot better than putting your back to them and relying on the screen to do the talking. 

#6: Using the Pre-Installed Templates and Fonts Templates and default fonts aren’t all bad—if you’re in a real hurry, if you’re lazy, if you’re uncreative, or if you have a hard time coming up with new ideas on your own. Using templates and defaults, I suppose, is better than creating a horribly ugly design, but just know that you won’t impress anybody. Just a tip: a solid white background with a really nice font (like Coolvetica, for instance) can look amazingly clean, simple, and sexy. You don’t have to be a design wizard to move away from the defaults.

#10: Using Weird Fonts Even if they’re calling your name, avoid them. PowerPoint presentations are not the place to use crazy fonts, no matter how appealing they seem. When you use text, it should be immediately legible. Century Gothic is nice. So is Coolvetica or Arial or any other simple sans serif font. But don’t be using Chiller, Curlz MT, or Rage Italic. They’re not cool; they’re weird. And they’ll make you look weird for using them.

#11: Putting Important Stuff by the Edges The funny thing about giving a presentation is that you often don’t know what the room will look like until you get there. What if you put some really important text at the bottom of each slide only to discover that there is a non-removable table in front of the scree where you are presenting and the audience can’t see it? Or, what if the screen is slightly smaller than the projector projects your image (and you can’t reach the projector)? I’ve seen both of these happen. If you want to plan ahead, keep all your important information in from the edges. Then, if something gets cut off, it’s no skin off your back.

#12: Don’t Use a Bad Color Scheme If you’re not good with colors, just use black and white. There’s no shame in that. Your presentation ought to be full of images and diagrams anyway, not a lot of text and fancy stuff, so black and white is fine. If you want to use color (it does have a nice touch sometimes), then keep your color scheme to about three or four colors and two might even be better. Keep it simple and avoid clashing colors. Oh, and don’t use holiday color schemes—green and red; orange and black; purple and yellow; red, white, and blue—unless you change their saturation and add in a third/fourth color that isn’t part of the holiday. 

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6 thoughts on “ Top 12 Most Annoying PowerPoint Presentation Mistakes ”

Pingback: Presentation Approaches 2.0 | Tyler Ed Tech 541 Fall 2013

This is very informative and stresses all the valid points of why some things aren’t meant to be a part of a presentation. Instead of using clipart, you can create your own custom images in PowerPoint with the geometric shapes provided. This can put your own creativity to work! http://presentationpanda.com/uncategorized/how-to-create-your-own-images-in-powerpoint-or-keynote/

For a ‘visual communication guy’ you certainly have made a very bland, wordy article. I got bored just scrolling down the page!

On the contrary – it delivered just what I needed. If you didn’t want an informative article then go find a Powerpoint filled with animations and written in Comic Sans.

this was too helpful thank u very much lol 🙂

i was probably going to do half of these but thx for the info

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How to Make a “Good” Presentation “Great”

• Guy Kawasaki

Remember: Less is more.

A strong presentation is so much more than information pasted onto a series of slides with fancy backgrounds. Whether you’re pitching an idea, reporting market research, or sharing something else, a great presentation can give you a competitive advantage, and be a powerful tool when aiming to persuade, educate, or inspire others. Here are some unique elements that make a presentation stand out.

• Fonts: Sans Serif fonts such as Helvetica or Arial are preferred for their clean lines, which make them easy to digest at various sizes and distances. Limit the number of font styles to two: one for headings and another for body text, to avoid visual confusion or distractions.
• Colors: Colors can evoke emotions and highlight critical points, but their overuse can lead to a cluttered and confusing presentation. A limited palette of two to three main colors, complemented by a simple background, can help you draw attention to key elements without overwhelming the audience.
• Pictures: Pictures can communicate complex ideas quickly and memorably but choosing the right images is key. Images or pictures should be big (perhaps 20-25% of the page), bold, and have a clear purpose that complements the slide’s text.
• Layout: Don’t overcrowd your slides with too much information. When in doubt, adhere to the principle of simplicity, and aim for a clean and uncluttered layout with plenty of white space around text and images. Think phrases and bullets, not sentences.

As an intern or early career professional, chances are that you’ll be tasked with making or giving a presentation in the near future. Whether you’re pitching an idea, reporting market research, or sharing something else, a great presentation can give you a competitive advantage, and be a powerful tool when aiming to persuade, educate, or inspire others.

• Guy Kawasaki is the chief evangelist at Canva and was the former chief evangelist at Apple. Guy is the author of 16 books including Think Remarkable : 9 Paths to Transform Your Life and Make a Difference.

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9 Disadvantages of Using PowerPoint Presentations!

By: Author Shrot Katewa

If you frequently have to prepare and deliver presentations you normally want to use software that is suitable for the topics you’ll be covering. The software should also allow you to shape the presentation into a style you are comfortable with.

PowerPoint might have been recommended to you but now you are wondering whether a presenting tool with such a lot of features as PowerPoint is not perhaps giving just as many issues.

The biggest drawback of PowerPoint is that it has many features and requires adequate training to use them properly. If not used correctly, it can affect the reputation of the presenter. Other disadvantages include files don’t save automatically, and PowerPoint is not free to use.

In the end, you have to decide whether you can live with these disadvantages when you compare them to the advantages. In this article, we list for your convenience 9 of the most important disadvantages of PowerPoint.

Also Read – Advantages of Using Microsoft PowerPoint!

1. Text-heavy slides

Text-heavy slides give too much information with too much text. This makes the slide boring and the audience will lose interest in the whole presentation.

Many PowerPoint presentations are unsuccessful because the presenter or compiler of the slideshow has tried to put as much content as possible in text form on the slide. A good slide should ideally only have the headings and sub-headings of what the presenter is conveying to the audience.

And if more information in text form is necessary to make it easier for the audience to follow the presenter and comprehend the content, the text should be well organized.

The use of columns or blocks and even different colors will make the slide much more interesting. Unfortunately, the slides of many PowerPoint presentations are not well-designed. 

Compilers of presentations are sometimes in a hurry and just add all the content they‘ve found on the slide without actually designing the slide. They don’t discriminate between really needed content and content that can confuse the audience.

Research has found that text-heavy slides are often used when the presenter just wants to read the information from the slides to the audience, instead of using the PowerPoint slides as a tool to emphasize certain aspects.

2. Too many features can get overwhelming

The PowerPoint developers have over time put more and more features into the software to theoretically make it possible for the compilers of presentations to complete the task without using any other tools or software.  But too many features can confuse the user.

This can cause you to spend a lot of time compiling your presentation, as you first want to look at the available features for every aspect you use and figure out how it works. 

It is overwhelming to have to pick the right feature for literary every aspect of the presentation. This is often the reason provided by users when asked why they don’t use PowerPoint. They prefer software packages with lesser choices but which are easier and simpler to use.

3. Most features usually remain unexplored

Because of the overwhelming effect of the large number of features offered by PowerPoint, most compilers of presentations using PowerPoint simplifies the process when they use it for the first time.

They search for features they understand and which seem easy to use. They then tend to stick to these features and don’t explore other features.  

Many of the slide designing features are for example not fully explored by compilers. Generally, a compiler will search for templates to use and when they have found a few they like, they are not interested in looking for more or designing their own.

PowerPoint users have indicated in surveys that a feature like the adding of video snippets into the presentation is for instance an example of features that usually remain unexplored.    

4. Can affect reputation if not used correctly

The presenter or compiler of the presentation might be trusting PowerPoint to always automatically create well-designed presentations. Unfortunately, this is not always the case.

The result can be a presentation with uninteresting and poorly designed slides.  And sometimes the presenter is a very good speaker but an inexperienced PowerPoint user. The combination of a poorly designed presentation with an inexperienced PowerPoint user can affect the reputation of the speaker.

Thus, the bottom line is that a good speaker has to ensure that every slide in the presentation is interesting and conveys just enough information to keep the audience focused.

The presenter should also use the presentation without reading from the screen. Eye contact with the audience is necessary to keep them focused.

5. Real-time collaboration is not the best

Real-time collaboration allows you to work with some of your other colleagues on the same presentation at the same time! This can for example be done with Google Slides. It is a great feature that is especially helpful when working from distant locations or working from home!

Must Read – PowerPoint vs Google Slides: Which Presentation Application Should You Use?

Unfortunately, only the PowerPoint in Office 365 has this real-time feature . If you use any other version of PowerPoint you will not be able to have real-time collaboration.

6. Requires downloading

Another disadvantage of PowerPoint is that you can’t run the application on the cloud as you can do with Google Slides for instance. The Office 365 PowerPoint software is the one exception.

You have to download the PowerPoint software onto your device to be able to use it.

7. Files are not automatically saved

One of the most frustrating things when compiling a presentation is to lose some of the already created slides because they haven’t been saved.  The ideal is that the software saves continuously as you are creating the presentation.

With PowerPoint (except for Office 365) you have to save manually. To ensure that work is not lost, you have to keep on pressing Ctrl+S from time to time. (Ctrl+S is the shortcut for saving a PowerPoint file.)

User reviews indicate that this is also one of the disadvantages that let presentation compilers move away from PowerPoint. In practice, you often just forget to save files manually and unsaved work can easily be lost.    

8. Files often too large to mail

 PowerPoint presentations can quickly become very large. Although you sometimes only want to mail a few files or slides, it often happens that you have to mail the whole presentation. When it exceeds the 10 MB or 25 MB file size it becomes difficult and sometimes impossible to mail.

9. A variety of errors can occur

Although the many features of PowerPoint might be an advantage for some users, the possibility of errors is very high when there are such a large number of features built into a program.  Presentations with fewer features normally develop fewer errors.

PowerPoint online support groups are full of questions. All these questions are an indication that users constantly encounter issues or don’t understand how the features work.  If you look at the answers on these forums it becomes clear that in some instances nobody actually has the correct answer.

Compared to other presentation applications there are much more errors when you use PowerPoint. 

Credit to Nakaridore (on Freepik) for the featured image of this article (further edited)

How-To Geek

Forget the powerpoint app for animations, use powerpoint for the web instead.

The PowerPoint app animation pane can be... a pain!

Quick Links

Why the powerpoint app is bad for animations, why powerpoint for the web is much better, tips for using animations in powerpoint for the web.

Using PowerPoint's animations increases your presentation's professionalism and helps you to emphasize certain elements within your slides. However, compared to the online version of PowerPoint, the animation pane in the Microsoft 365 app is confusing, unclear, and difficult to manage.

The main drawback of the animation pane on the Microsoft 365 PowerPoint app is its lack of clarity. When you add animations, you are offered a mixture of symbols and icons that—unless you're a seasoned PowerPoint expert—are confusing and unclear.

As you can see in the screenshot below, there are numbers and vague icons to the left of each animation, and different colored boxes in varying positions to the right. And if you have animations grouped together, you have to click on the gray bar to see them individually.

What's more, to make changes to the animation—such as the timing or the type of effect—you have to click on the drop-down box and then decide which is the best option (from the many available) to take you where you want to go.

It's also not immediately clear exactly what each animation is when you glance at the animation pane—you have to take the time to hover over the animation in the pane or click on the description to remind yourself of what you've chosen for each element on your slide. And when you do, you're only given minimal details.

Finally, all of the above confusions become even worse if you have dozens of animations on each slide.

It seems that Microsoft recognized that the Animation Pane in the app was substandard, so they took the opportunity to improve these features in the web-based version of the program.

First, you don't have to decode the confusing symbols and icons anymore. The words On Click have replaced the mouse icon, the name of the animation (in this case, Fly In) has replaced the colored star icon, and the duration of the animation is also displayed (in the app version, you'd have to go through two clicks to find this important information). Microsoft has also done away with the pointless colored boxes that were supposed to tell you the timing sequence of the animations.

However, the best feature of the web-based workflow is that you can click on any of the animations in the Animation Pane to view more details, so viewing and changing your animation options is much easier than in the app.

After you've clicked on an animation in the Animation Pane, you can:

• See and change the animation type.
• Decide whether the animation should appear when you click or after a certain time following the previous animation.
• Change the animation duration
• Add a delay.

In the app-based version of PowerPoint, these options were all accessible via a lottery of drop-down options and dialog boxes, so the PowerPoint for the web's Animation Pane saves you time and presents everything to you much more clearly.

It's also much easier to add more than one animation to an item when using the web version of PowerPoint. Simply select the element you want to add another animation to, and click "Add" at the top of the Animation Pane. Likewise, you can easily delete an existing animation by clicking the trash icon next to the relevant item in the Animation Pane.

To animate an item that doesn't already have animations, just select the item on your slide and the same "Add" button will become active for you to click.

Overall, the web-based interface is much more user-friendly and a huge improvement on the PowerPoint app, especially when it comes to using the Animation Pane.

We have a few quick tips to know when you start using animations.

Reorder Your Animations

To reorder your animations in the Animation Pane, click and drag the animation card up or down via the six dots next to the relevant animation.

View More Animations

By default, the Animation Pane offers some of the more commonly-used entrance animations when you want to animate an item. However, to see more animations, click "View More Animations," which will show more entrance, exit, and emphasis animations.

Animate Items Together

To apply the same animation to multiple items on your slide, click the first item, hold Ctrl, and then select the other items. Then, click "Add" in the Animation Pane, and choose the animation you want to use. When you present your slideshow, all the items you selected will appear, exit, or be emphasized in the same way and at the same time.

Now that you can master animations on PowerPoint for the web, check out these PowerPoint tips to make sure your presentation is professional and easy for your audience to follow.