6 Worst Presentations Ever & Why They Suck [#5 Is CRAZY]
We’ve all had to sit through bad presentations, the boring ones that go on too long, the complicated, badly planned presentations, or horror, the presentations with photos of the presenter’s child or cat.
While you may know the basic rules – keep text to a minimum, use contrasting colors, follow the 10-20-30 rule (10 slides, 20 minutes, 30 point text size), some people seem to have failed to get the memo.
The next 6 slides will make you laugh, or cry, or gasp. Enjoy!
1 – Who thought an image in the background was a good idea?
Too much information.
Images and text don’t mix. Period. We’ve achieved pretty much nothing at all by overlaying the text onto an image like this. You can’t see the image properly, and you can’t read the text easily either. The different colors in the background make it almost impossible to find a contrasting text color, and the many colors distract you from reading the words themselves.
This slide would look a whole lot better if there was one slide for the text, and another for the photo.
2 – Sooooo much to read
We’ve all seen slides like this. The presenter has so much they want to tell us, they cram it all onto one slide. But all they have done is give us information overload and bored us into turning off. In order to squeeze all that text onto one slide, they had to make it really really small, making it almost impossible to read, even if you really wanted to.
This slide could be improved by splitting up the information and putting it on more slides. Each point could be made in bullet points rather than full sentences to make it shorter, and they could also be rewritten to make sure they only include the most important information.
3 – Am I supposed to understand this?
Read about it: https://leejackson.org/worst-ppt-slide-contest-winners-infocus/
This slide is an oldie, but a goodie. It won the ‘What Not to Present’ competition run by InFocus back in 2011, who described it as ‘the depths of hell’. While visual aids are great in presentations, 20 minutes is nowhere near enough time to untangle something this complex. What do these arrows even mean? Why do some point up and most point down the graph?
I actually have no suggestions at all about how this slide could have ever avoided being called the worst presentation ever.
4. Boring fonts are boring
Yawn, please wake me up when it’s over.
Christmas is supposed to be fun, the most magical time of the year even. So why is this slide absolutely no fun at all? Why use such a boring font? Where’s the pictures of Santa? Why is it cold and clinical rather than filled with the warm images and colors that we usually associate with Christmas?
The creator of this slide could have created a festive feeling simply by using a different color background (for example, red) which reminds people of Father Christmas, and compliments the text on the slide. A more exciting font would automatically make the audience want to read what is written. And some small images, some mistletoe maybe, would have given this slide a festive feel that this original totally lacks.
5 – My eyes hurt
Credit: https://24slides.com/presentbetter/bad-powerpoint-examples-you-should-avoid/
Ow, my eyes, my eyes. Why would anyone choose these color contrasts when creating a slide? This slide is a kaleidoscope of colors, which creates overload. The bright green background overwhelms the viewer, and the icons can’t stand out against it. The text colors were chosen to match the icons, but they also don’t stand out against the background.
Best practice for slides is to use high contrasting colors, for example black or dark blue font on a white, or very light colored background. Avoid dark backgrounds because they are not accessible to people with poor vision, or bright backgrounds because nothing stands out against them. You should also avoid color-blind combinations such as green and red, and blue and yellow.
6 – F for readability
Script fonts may remind us of handwriting, and give your presentation a fun, informal feeling, but they are super difficult to read on a slide. From afar, the letters of a script font all run into each other, making individual letters, and even whole words unreadable! And when you have important stuff to say, you want to make it as easy as possible for everyone to read it.
When choosing a font for your presentation, you need to consider how readable it is. Script style or curly fonts are especially hard for people to read as the words bleed into each other. Serif fonts (like Times New Roman) have curly-ques attached to each letter, which can also make letters feel too close together.
Avoid making the worst presentation slides ever
Presentations are making a comeback in schools, colleges and offices. When the time comes for you to create your next presentation, use a template to make it look fun, slick, and professional, and avoid the trap of creating a slide that will be featured in a blog like this one day.
Check out Emaze’s templates, and choose the one that suits your topic and style. They are easy to use, and will make your finished presentation look great.
Have you seen a really bad presentation? Tell us about it at [email protected]
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The World’s Worst PowerPoint Presentations
The world’s worst powerpoint presentations.
Convoluted flow charts? Tacky, out-of-focus graphics? Huge blocks of text? Welcome to PowerPoint Hell.
Most of you have probably had to make a PowerPoint presentation, so you probably know the basic PowerPoint rules : Use a lot of bullet points. Don’t overdo the text. Avoid multimedia excesses. Et cetera.
It might seem like pretty basic stuff to you, oh PowerPoint Guru, but unfortunately it’s not so obvious to some other people. We took a stroll through the PowerPoint presentation-sharing site, Slideshare.net, and found a scarily large number of really bad PowerPoint presentations. Here are some of the worst (or should we say best?) ones of the bunch.
Images and Text Do Not Mix
This PowerPoint presentation on cars (we know it’s about cars because an introductory slide consists of the word “CARS” in huge, garish orange-and-blue letters) puts all of its images in the background (after applying a little tasteful fading), with paragraphs of text overlaid on them. This accomplishes the difficult feat of making the images hard to look at and the text hard to read. Perfect–a lose-lose situation!
The presenter could have consolidated the text in one part of the image, using the image’s horizontal guiding lines; but that didn’t happen, so the slide manages to look sloppy as well as unreadable. Bonus points for misspelling “carburetor.”
To Be Fair, Social Networking Is Complicated
The first rule of flow charts is that they should be intelligible. In a presentation , you do have a chance to explain what’s going on, but a good PowerPoint series makes sense on its own. The flow chart presented here is simply baffling–and the pictures don’t help much. What’s going where? Who’s getting what? What’s the difference between a one in a big black square and a one in a little red circle? What is a “follower feed”? And why are the some of the “salmon” going downstream?
Nor does this social networking slideshow rally after the incoherent flow chart: It later shows a series of e-mail screen caps that are ugly at best, and incomprehensible at worst.
A Symmetrical Rainbow of Confusion
Colors are great for attracting an audience . But stick with two or three–not six or seven–and use them consistently. The colors in this “ social business map ” don’t clarify anything. Why are “Social Web” and “Social Enterprise” in different colors but “Cloud/SaaS” and “On-Premise” in the same color? Why do blue and green diamonds populate orange and white areas as well as blue and green areas? Why does “Trend” appear as two converging white areas while “Standards” appears as a single vanishing brown area?
The whole chart looks like an alien Venn diagram, and the big labels along the bottom appear in random colors that correspond to nothing else on the chart. Why?
Flow Chart on Steroids
The left side of this PowerPoint slide on customer lifetime value in service contracts does pretty well (If you overlook the iffy capitalization, the wacky punctuation, and the inconsistent framing of the “Modeling issues”): The text is in short bullet points , colors and fonts are restrained, and the presenter used a basic slide template (when in doubt, use a template!).
But then we get to the flow chart. Presumably the red arrows are there to explain what’s going on in the maze of black arrows. The red arrows are somewhat helpful, except for the jarring overlay of red on black. As for the 10,000 black arrows, they probably make a point, or something, but really?
The Endless “Summary”
Filling an entire PowerPoint slide with text is never a great idea–especially not when the content is printed in 10-point type and is three or four times longer than the Gettysburg Address. Even worse is the idea of using an impenetrable slab of 10-point text to provide an “ executive summary ” of the ensuing presentation. It’s hard to imagine what useful thing the presenter thought this slide would accomplish–no one is going to want to read the text, and if the presenter does so, what’s left to say in the presentation ?
The most chilling part of this cautionary tale? The audience hasn’t even seen the entire “executive summary” yet–it continues on the next slide.
100 Graphs in One Little Slide
Graphs and charts are usually PowerPoint presentation gold: They’re visual, informative, and hard to screw up. So, obviously, the more graphs and charts, the better–right? Like, say, 100 graphs and charts. And to sweeten that deal, let’s put all 100 of ’em on one slide. What could go wrong?
Or rather, what couldn’t go wrong? The whole PowerPoint presentation on lung cancer surgery is pretty bad, but this slide showing 100 charts neatly stacked like coffins in a ten-by-ten array takes the cake. Not only are the graphs so small as to be unreadable, but did we mention there are 100 of them? Oh, and a slide heading that makes sense in English would’ve been nice.
Slides With Ads–Are They Clickable?
What’s worse than using generic Microsoft clip art in a PowerPoint presentation ? Using a Web banner ad as the top image across all of the slides–that’s what. The creator of this presentation about a “ snoring solution ” didn’t even bother to crop off the “Special Offer: Order Now” part of the graphic (which looks as though it were made to run on Yahoo Chat pages, circa 1999).
Hey, we’re all for blatantly touting your Website during a PowerPoint presentation (though you really should limit your self-promotion to the first or last slide–not both–or you may induce shill fatigue), but decorating a presentation with your company’s online banner ads is pretty cheesy.
The Case of the Invisible Text
PowerPoint slide transitions are best left to the fourth-grade science fair crowd. But if you insist on using them (don’t say we didn’t warn you), make sure that your text doesn’t behave like a Cheshire cat.
In a PowerPoint presentation on the future of learning technology , the slides leading up to this one (slide 18) are visually interesting and don’t overdo the text or graphs. But slide 18 contains three bullet-type points that appear and then disappear as the presenter clicks through it. The only thing worse than putting multiple paragraphs of text into a slide is putting up text that vanishes unexpectedly. It’s supposed to be a visual aid, not a magic show.
Bad Bullet Points
In a PowerPoint presentation , reducing paragraphs to bullet points helps your audience follow the presentation more easily. But “reducing paragraphs to bullet points” doesn’t mean sticking bullet-point icons in front of paragraphs.
As a rule of thumb, if you have to resize your text to 12- or 10-point type to get it to fit, you have too much text. This presentation on social media is a great example of bullet points gone bad. The text is tiny, the bullet points are longer than ten words each, and at least one of them is a full-fledged paragraph.
For more PowerPoint sins to avoid, check out “ PowerPoint Hell: Don’t Let This Happen to Your Next Presentation .”
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5 Worst Presentations ever & Why They Went Wrong
Introduction.
Think about the worst presentation ever experienced by you or someone you know. What do you remember about it? Do you remember the topic? Your answer is most probably no. Everyone wants to* deliver a great presentation , so we have ways to help you avoid giving the worst presentation ever of your career, as you’ll see later. First, let’s look at some examples of terrible presentations.
What is the worst presentation you have ever seen?
There are so many examples of the worst presentation ever you can find both online and in real life. These examples show some of the worst presentations ever; some of which make the whole slide painful to look at or read. Can you point out the reasons why each one fails?
5 examples of terrible presentations
The tragic overuse of visual aids.
Image address
The slide has an overlay of text on images showing the topic of the presentation. While* using visual aids is good , it requires a lot more tact to pull off than this worst presentation ever.
Overcomplicated graphs and charts
This slide tells you everything and nothing at the same time. Whatever the graphs are meant to portray is lost in the overwhelming number of charts in the slide.
Too much information
All this text packed into one slide cannot be easy to read. If the audience has to read everything on the slide, there is no need for a presentation.
No one can read this
This is what happens when people go overboard with fancy fonts. How can anybody be expected to read this while listening to the presentation?
Splash of color
Using bold colors is a great move – as long as you don’t pack them all into a painful collage. The colors have no contrast, and thus, the slide is impossible to read.
What makes a presentation terrible?
Several factors go into what makes the worst presentation ever terrible. Now, there are specific rules you have to follow when creating a presentation, and we will get into that. First, let us look at some of the things that ruin a presentation – you might recognize a few of them.
Ten things that make a presentation bad
1. emotionless and stiff delivery.
One mistake many people make is delivering it in a flat, monotonous tone . You need to show some emotion during a presentation, so you don’t lose their attention. Speak with passion and enthusiasm to keep their attention on you.
2. Lecturing instead of presenting
When you’re explaining something, it is very easy to fall into a pattern of talking down to your audience. It is one fast way to lose the audience’s attention. Your tone has to be polite but engaging instead of condescending. The worst presentation ever shark tank viewers know are usually lectures.
3. Blending all your points
You need to have a central topic. And you have to stay on the theme throughout, with your closing statement tying up the central message neatly. If you speak with no defined points, you will give your worst presentation ever.
4. Avoiding eye contact
Eye contact is a way to get people to focus on you, especially when they don’t know anything about you. If you avoid eye contact with the people listening to you, you can quickly lose their trust. People want to listen to those they trust, and if you seem unsure, it will be harder to pass your message.
5. Not relating to the audience
Many people jump into a presentation without knowing their audience. You need to anticipate their needs, expectations, and questions before you go in to present. Otherwise, you can be saying the right thing to the wrong person.
6. Overdoing your slide design
Your slide design is one of the first things that can make your presentation the worst PowerPoint presentation ever, so don’t mess it up. Be careful, so it doesn’t look tacky and unprofessional. It should reflect the topic and theme.
7. Being too formal
Being formal in the right situation is great, as long as you don’t become stiff and robotic. In the wrong situation, however, you can come off as boring, and ruin your presentation.
8. Using bad body language
Body language is as important as your spoken language . You can use it to pass across many messages. So, when you have poor body language , you pass the wrong message.
9. Trying too hard
Very few things turn people off than a try-hard. Keep things natural, and be your confident self. Trying too hard is a symptom of unsureness, and it can make you lose favor with the crowd.
10. Making inappropriate jokes and comments
Humor is a great way to connect with your audience and create rapport, but it has to be done right. If you introduce jokes at the wrong place or time, your presentation can become the worst presentation ever very quickly. Study the audience and know when to be serious and when to be funny. Also, keep your jokes clean.
Avoid embarrassing moments while giving a presentation. Download Orai and start practicing
How do you deal with embarrassing moments?
Everyone has embarrassing moments *sometimes, but it’s how we handle them that makes the difference. Have you recently embarrassed yourself on stage by delivering the worst presentation ever? Well, that’s not the end of the world for you. There are several ways you can get over those embarrassing situations.
- Don’t dwell too much on the situation
These things happen, so the worst thing you can do is dwell on them and let them affect you. Accept that they happened and look for ways to keep them from happening again. For example, if you forgot parts of your speech , you can prepare better next time or carry some flashcards to help.
- Talk to someone about it
Talking to a trusted friend or family member can help you with the embarrassment. It can also change your perspective on things after hearing from someone else. You would be surprised by how many people believe they have given the worst presentation ever.
- Learn to laugh at yourself
When you know how to laugh at yourself, it is easier not to take yourself too seriously, it can help you think positively and learn how to go easier on yourself.
- Look for a teachable moment
If you see every situation in life as a teachable moment, it can help you put things in perspective . Next time you feel embarrassed, look for the lesson in that situation and learn from it, to not fall into that situation again. You can also learn from others , like the worst presentation ever shark tank shows on TV.
How to avoid the fear
It is very normal to feel fear before a big presentation, especially if you don’t do it often. The fear of public speaking is one of the top phobias among adults, and everyone is scared of giving the worst presentation ever. But there are ways you can get over that fear and speak a lot more confidently in public.
Helpful tips for getting over your fear of presenting
1. prepare adequately beforehand.
Practice is important because you don’t want to go in front of your audience and mess up your speech or forget important parts of the speech . You have to practice at least a few days before your speech .
When you prepare adequately, you feel more confident in your stance, and this confidence can help drive away some of the fear you might have had. Practice your speech right before your presentation so you can make last-minute adjustments.
2. Find out the root of the problem and take care of it
As with other phobias, y our Glossophobia may come from past trauma or another psychological problem . Some people associate presentations with embarrassing events from their past, some have low self-esteem, and some might have legitimate reasons to be afraid of delivering their worst presentation ever.
Whatever your reason, you have to* find out what it is and deal with it . If you’re lucky, you may be able to handle them yourself. Make a list of your worries and find a solution for each one. Otherwise, you can talk to a professional to guide you through it.
3. Think positive thoughts
If you have bad thoughts towards your speaking engagement, try to get your mind positive before your presentation is meant to start. You can do that by meditating, doing some breathing exercises, and getting rid of the negative thoughts in your mind. Try to visualize yourself, giving a good presentation and not the worst presentation ever.
4. Organize your speech
When your speech is properly organized, you will be a lot less nervous. Create a plan of action and organize everything to the minute. Before you start, check all your props and aids, and make sure they are in place. Go over your speech and arrange your flashcards accordingly. Check your PowerPoint slides themes and designs.
5. Make sure you know what you’re talking about
No matter how good your speech is, you won’t feel confident unless you know it well. People make the mistake of memorizing the lines of the speech without really understanding them. Then, if someone asks a question they didn’t prepare for, they panic.
You need to understand your presentation’s topic well enough to talk about it in your own words. The confidence that comes from knowing something can overshadow whatever doubts and fear you had before, and you won’t worry too much about giving the worst presentation ever.
How do I calm my nerves before my speech?
The closer a big presentation is, the more nervous you will be . Even accomplished speakers , like the people who give the worst presentation ever shark tank shows, deal with some nerves before a big presentation. However, you need to get rid of them before you deliver your presentation, so they don’t turn out to be your worst presentation ever.
Ways to calm the nerves before a big talk
- Practice your speech
The importance of practice before any speaking engagement cannot be overemphasized. You can rehearse your speech a few times before you’re due to speak, and that can help you relax a little. You can practice anywhere, as long as you’re comfortable.
Practice your speech with Orai. Get feedback on your tone, tempo, confidence , and conciseness
- Get to the venue earlier
Lateness only helps to compound your nerves and leave you disorganized. Make sure you get to the venue earlier than your allocated time so you can relax for a few minutes and gather yourself.
- Watch other presenters
You can watch presentations by other orators online to get some tips and to help you relax. If you’re a part of a group, you can watch the other presenters go before your turn. This helps to focus your nerves, and you can learn a helpful tip, so you don’t deliver your worst presentation ever.
- Get used to your environment before the presentation
Take some time and observe the environment where you will present. You can watch the people, pick up on the atmosphere, and get used to it before your time to present. If you don’t feel at home, it can make you deliver your worst presentation ever.
- Engage in self-care before your speech
Selfcare is very important, especially before a presentation. You can practice self-care in many ways, depending on what relaxes you. Some people like reading a book, some prefer walks, and some like meditating. Find the one that suits you and relax your nerves.
Avoidable mistakes people make on PowerPoint presentations
- Packing too much written text on one slide. Your slide can only take a certain amount of text before it becomes the worst PowerPoint presentation ever
- Using complicated diagrams and graphs that the audience cannot understand easily
- Using unnecessary transitions and animations. It’s a slide and not the worst PowerPoint presentation ever
- Breaking the flow of the speech
- Burying the significant information instead of centering it at the beginning of the presentation
- Using bad contrasts, like white text on pale colors. You need the text and background colors to contrast
Differences between a good presentation and the worst presentation ever
Things you should never say during your speech.
- ‘I don’t know.’
If you don’t know the answer to a question thrown at you during a presentation, offer to get the answer later. Saying you don’t know makes you look unprepared.
Instead, say what you want to say directly. Saying ‘I think’ before making a statement can make you sound unsure of its validity.
- Wrong statements
Every statement you make during your presentation has to be based on facts . Back them up with studies and statistics . You don’t have to state all your references, but you should have them for anyone that asks. This is a problem found in the worst presentation ever shark tank puts on TV
- Filler words
Filler words are crutches that muddle up your speech and make it sound broken. When you rely on filler words, you start to sound unsure and uncertain of what you’re saying. They can also* distract your audience and dilute your message .
- ‘Do you have any questions?’
It doesn’t engage your audience, and it can sound so cliché. Instead, guide them towards asking questions and let them know you will be open to taking questions after your presentation.
Do’s and don’ts of presentations
Many examples of bad presentations exist, like the worst presentation ever shark tank has brought to the TV screen. But nobody wants to be the one delivering the worst presentation ever. With the tips in this article, you can avoid that and also give the worst PowerPoint presentation ever!
Still, confused? No worries, get over your fear of public speaking . Download Orai now and start practicing.
About the Author
Abhishek kg.
I like building and growing simple yet powerful products for the world and the worldwide web.
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Top 10 world's worst PowerPoint presentations
Follow these top PowerPoint tips and get the best Powerpoint templates online. Don't design bad presentation slides like these.
The World's Worst PowerPoint Presentations
Images and Text Do Not Mix
To Be Fair, Social Networking Is Complicated
A Symmetrical Rainbow of Confusion
Flow Chart on Steroids
The Endless “Summary”
100 Graphs in One Little Slide
Slides With Ads - Are They Clickable?
The Case of the Invisible Text
Bad Bullet Points
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6 Presentations That Are So Horrible You Might Get Nightmares
Yousef "yoyo" abu ghaidah.
- November 28, 2017
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We’ve all sat through presentations that we found, for lack of a better term, horrible. But sometimes, we encounter presentations that are so bad, so disgusting, so monumentally horrific, that we have to sit back and appreciate just how awful they are. I’m going to cover some of these of these presentations in this post, and yes, do expect a laugh or two. More importantly, these eyesores also give a strong indication of everything you should NOT do the next time you create your PowerPoint slides. So, let’s laugh and learn.
1. This Awful “Summary”
Where do I even begin with this?
The whole idea of a summary is to give a brief statement of the main points in regards to something. The key word here, obviously, is ‘brief.’ So imagine my surprise when I see a wall of text so large it would probably take the rest of my life to go through all the important points. I can’t overstate just how huge this text box is. I mean, look at it! It’s so big it goes over the illustration at the bottom left corner!
Nobody is going to sit there and read that. I wouldn’t even do it if you paid me. Presenters are better off using icons to illustrate the main points, and maybe add a few text boxes to get the message across; check out Slide Cow’s icons guide here to know how to do just that .
2. This Terrible Graph Spam
I used this picture to illustrate why technical people suck at PowerPoint . I guess the point still holds merit if people think it’s a good idea to make a slide that looks like this.
Graphs and charts are a norm in presentations. If anything, they tend to presentations sexy since people are always looking to find ways to visualize data. But trust me on this, you don’t need 100 graphs on the same slide . Yeah, I counted.
Presenters are better off using a more systematic approach to beautifully visualize data like the one I outlined in a separate post . A process like the one I described will at the very least safeguard people from making horrible PowerPoint slides like this.
Also, I can’t help but notice that the title takes up a quarter of the slide. I mean for God’s sake. Come on.
3. This Disgusting Hairball
Somebody actually thought it would be a good idea to present something like this?
When I saw this slide, I was motivated to do a little research to find out what the purpose of its existence is. Not surprisingly, I didn’t get very far. All I understood was that this slide was presented to Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal and it had something to do with some strategy (perhaps military strategy?) in Afghanistan.
Gen. McChrystal, I salute you for even having the audacity to process whatever this slide is.
Honestly, anyone is better off doing anything else that isn’t this. That includes putting a face on a keyboard and rolling it.
4. This Horrible Merry-Go-Round
What the hell even is this?
It’s so terrible I can’t even come up with a witty remark about it. Look at it! Arrows are flying everywhere like doves from a John Woo movie (oh, wait, I guess I can).
Even if I gave this slide the benefit of the doubt and put the use of arrows aside, I can’t get over the horrible use of the text; it’s just plastered everywhere! What makes it worse is that the different text boxes are rotated too.
For slides like this, stick to making easy-to-process infographics that are designed to get one’s point across. Slide Cow has tons of infographic tutorials; in fact, the last PowerPoint tutorial I covered gave an excellent example of how to make a funnel infographic that doesn’t look like crap .
Whatever you choose to do, just make sure it isn’t whatever this is.
5. These Atrocious Uses of Images
HAHAHAHAHAH.
Okay, okay I’m done.
If one wants a decent front cover, then one must learn to make one. Here’s a tutorial where I covered how to make a beautiful front cover from scratch .
Oh, you thought we were done with this part of the post? You thought wrong. Here’s another slide from the same presentation.
Come on. Is it too much to ask to get a decent title and block of text on a slide without choosing horrible effects that a 5-year-old would go for?
If presenters want to have an image as a background, then they should at least learn how to do it right. This tutorial over here is a good example of how background images can complement the text on the slide .
6. This Brutal Word Art Avalanche
This one’s my all-time favorite.
When I was a kid, I always thought that Word Art was the bee’s knees to every Microsoft Office file out there. Come to think of it, I pretty much used all the Word Art styles available on my .doc and .ppt files. But I would have never, ever, not for a second, thought that using them all on the same slide (or page) would be a good idea.
It’s as if the person who made this slide went out of his/her way to exhaust every Word Art avenue there was and make something that could make eyes bleed. If that was the intent, then mission accomplished.
Seriously though, don’t do this. Here’s a better tutorial that highlights how to add little creative flair to text the right way .
Let me show you how to be amazing
If you’re looking for a way to make fantastic PowerPoint slides in a matter of seconds, then I urge you to check out the Slide Cow Toolkit . You can’t go wrong with over 120 pre-made, editable, multipurpose PowerPoint slides, 700 editable icons and 5 hours and 40 minutes of video guide content that teach you how to make jaw-droppingly good presentation slides. The value of this one package is pretty incredible, and will, without doubt, toss the ideas of making horrible slides like the ones you just saw in the garbage.
Save the world from terrible presentations
There are two things that you need to do right now.
First, share this article with everybody and anybody that either gives presentations or uses PowerPoint regularly. Post it on your social media, email it to your colleagues at work; I don’t care. The whole idea of this post is to stop terrible slides from ever coming to the surface again.
Second, drop me a line in the comments below and tell me the single worst experience you had when it came to a horribly designed presentation. How did you feel? Were any steps taken to remedy the awfulness?
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Bad PowerPoint Examples You Should Avoid at All Costs
There is a lot of information online on how to better your PowerPoint presentations. But sometimes an example of what you should not do can be very useful in the way of avoiding mistakes. So, what does a really bad presentation look like? Here I’ll show you the worst of the worst PowerPoint sins you can commit when designing your presentation. These bad PowerPoint examples will show you exactly what you don’t want your presentation to look like.
From slides so ugly they cause eye strain, to just plain boring, if your presentation looks anything like this, then you have some work to do! But to prove that everything has a solution, we asked our team of in-house designers to show us how they would fix some of these terrible PowerPoint slides.
Too much text
PowerPoint is a great tool, but it’s just that: a tool. It should not overshadow you. To exploit the presentation as a visual aid, you want it to complement the speaker, not to repeat word for word everything it’s being said. Too much text can be an important factor in the “death by PowerPoint” phenomenon. Just from seeing whole blocks of text, people watching your presentation can feel immediately overwhelmed. Surely you can relate to feeling annoyed just from finding out that the presentation you’re sitting through has way too much text on its slides.
People are usually visually-focused since, as a species, it’s the sense we have developed the most. Chances are that, as soon as people see the slide, they’re going to start reading it from start to finish. And doing so, they’ll be paying less (or no) attention to the speaker in front of them – in this case, you! And, if you’re just repeating what’s being said in the slide, why should they? Even when it’s not exactly the same, as a speaker you’ll be competing with your own presentation for your audience’s attention.
Having the speech word for word on the presentation can also worsen the abilities of even the most experienced public speaker. It’s too tempting to read, instead of going with the flow and accommodating your audience’s mood. Most likely, your presentation will feel stiff and not very engaging. After all, timing is a great part of becoming a successful presenter.
This is a bad PowerPoint example that clearly has too much text. When the text is this long, PowerPoint will immediately lower the size of your fonts to make it fit on the slide. In the end, you’ll find yourself with text so small that even if the audience wanted to read it they wouldn’t be able to.
So, how do you avoid lengthy text slides? Think caveman-like speech. Do not, by any means, dump complete paragraphs in your presentation. Some even say to even avoid complete sentences . Focus on your keywords, in the most important concepts or ideas that you want your public to take with them. People have limited capacity for retention, and focusing on key points will make your presentation easier to digest.
For example, check out the slide our designers fixed:
Animations are a tricky topic. PowerPoint has over 150 animations, and some presentations seem to have made it their personal goal to try all of them. As a general rule, too many animations are an easy way to make your PowerPoint look unprofessional and outdated. When every single element in a slide is animated, it’s distracting (and even tiring) for your audience.
Even for the presenter, animations can become a nuisance. Animating a slide in a way that every single element needs a click to appear or disappear is probably not the best idea. It’ll have you worried and distracted thinking if you have already shown all the points you were meaning to show, or if you have shown too many. Many times presenters can even give away their next slides too early. This will not only ruin your timing but probably distract your audience too, as they will remain thinking of the next point rather than focusing on what you’re speaking.
Of course, using animations doesn’t mean your presentation becomes immediately awful. Here at 24Slides, our designers use them often in our free templates. For example, check out this great Project Management Template . It has animations for several elements, but they work automatically, without the need of clicking. This way, the presenter doesn’t have to distract themselves with it.
Compare it to this bad PowerPoint example. Each element of the slide is animated separately, so it takes much longer to finally show them all. Also, each element has more than one animation. It makes the slide look overloaded, and distracts the audience.
So, how many animations are too many? There is no “correct” amount of animations. Most presentations can be more than fine with none at all. The key to work with animations without overusing them is to give them an emphasis purpose. See what I did there? If the whole paragraph was in bold letters, it would be difficult to pick out quickly which was the most important idea behind it. But since it is just one word, now “ emphasis” is the idea that will stand out.
Think of animations as a highlighter. It makes little sense for you to highlight every single word on a page. It will be unhelpful, and most likely, annoying. But if you highlight just the main ideas, it can be extremely useful. You can even use animation to highlight shock value or unexpected changes. Just remember: when talking about animations, less is always more.
For example, in this slide, the animations are used to shift the focus from topic to topic. Having all these arrows around might be confusing for the public, but with the colors and the arrow shifting, you can redirect your audience’s attention to wherever you like.
“Rainbow” Presentations
Color and its use is a whole other topic. But you don’t need to be an expert in color theory to be able to make a decent looking presentation (though it sure helps). You can summarize the general rules of using color in just one point: make it easy to read! Loud, bright colors , like orange, or lime green, are probably not the best for a presentation.
Also, take into consideration that for your public to be able to read easily you need to contrast your colors. For example, black letters on a white background, despite looking very simple, is also very easy to read. While something like light grey on white will probably give your audience problems. For example, check out this yellow text on a lime green background. It’s not very friendly, is it?
Now, if you want to go a step further and give your PowerPoint a more professional look, you should pick a color palette. Microsoft Office has thousands of templates you can pick from, and even some of our own. But if you don’t wish to use one, you can also pick a premade color palette. This will ensure that the colors on your presentation don’t clash together. Something as easy as this can give your presentation a much more polished look.
The Fake Minimalistic
Sometimes people can take too far the saying “less is more”. While having different color palettes in one single presentation may make it look unprofessional and eye-straining, an all-white presentation is not the answer either. PowerPoint’s blank templates are a good place to start since you can edit them to your taste and according to your own necessities. But they are not meant to be left like that for a serious presentation. Blank presentations are just plain boring, and that can be as distracting as too many colors.
Sobriety is different than being simplistic. Even if you feel you’re taking the “safe” route when designing a presentation, it can backfire. An all-white presentation can make you look lazy, or that you didn’t put any effort into it. It can affect the way people perceive your work too.
Take this bad PowerPoint example of an all-white presentation with just bullet points. As you can see, it becomes predictable and boring very fast. Plain PowerPoint presentations can also lead to the common “death by PowerPoint”. It just doesn’t give the audience any motivation to keep paying attention. It doesn’t have to be filled with colors, animations or graphics. Keep it simple, but elegant!
This is the slide fixed by our designers. No one can say it doesn’t professional, but it’s not boring either. You can check out this Minimalistic Design Templates for more inspiration.
Pictures and Fonts
As with colors and animations, here also applies the “less is more” rule. Your priority should be your audience’s ease when reading. For example, a font like Impact , that has too little space between the letters, is probably not the best choice. Over-stylized fonts can also be a problem, especially those that imitate italics. This also applies to font size too. In general, it should never go below 20 pts. The easiest way to see if your font size is good enough is to go to the farthest possible point of the room where you’ll be giving your presentation in. You should still be able to read it easily.
Choose your images smartly! Too many images can also be distracting to the public, especially if they overlap. When considering several images, ask yourself if you really need all of them, or if one can stand for some of the others as well. Check this bad PowerPoint example with too many pictures. It looks messy, right? Even if images are great to illustrate a point and to avoid using too much text, too many of them will make the presentation look outdated.
Also, avoid clipart! It has been a while since the 2000s, so there is no reason for you to be using Screen Beans.
What all these bad PowerPoint examples have in common
In summary, there are two basic rules for a great PowerPoint presentation. It must be visually engaging and it must be clear. Sometimes people can feel tempted to sacrifice one of these points to make the other stand out. For example, adding too many images or animations in hopes of making it more engaging to the public. But this will only make it look confusing and unprofessional. Or, on the other end, add too much text to make their every point clear. This will make a boring, overwhelming presentation that will distract your audience from the speaker.
What all these bad PowerPoint examples have in common is that they lack the balance between engaging and clarity. Avoid “death by PowerPoint” and engage your audience. Use everything in your power to catch their attention and keep it. Microsoft offers a lot of resources to do that: colors, graphics, pictures, embedded videos, animations and so on. It is up to you to use them smartly. Ask yourself, can I change this complete sentence for a picture or a keyword?
But also, review your own presentation as a spectator would. Is it clear? Are the pictures or animations distracting? Are the colors clashing which each other or are they eye-straining? Only when you consider both you’ll be able to design a truly great PowerPoint presentation.
If you want more tips on how to become a better presenter, you may like to read this article on the 15 most common presentation mistakes you want to avoid .
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The pentagon has the worst powerpoint slides you’ve ever seen.
The Pentagon isn’t just America’s military brain—it’s also a vast bureaucracy filled with middle managers and that means it’s churning out lots of presentations. Bureaucratic presentations means PowerPoint, the universally loathed presentation software, and no one gives a shitty PowerPoint quite like the US military.
The Internet Archive —the site that catalogs the world’s digital detritus—has scooped up hundreds of publicly available military PowerPoints and preserved them for public consumption . The Archive calls it the Military Industrial PowerPoint Complex and it's as bad as you’d expect a mix of high technology, bloody wars, and banal graphics to be.
The Archive will be hosting a an event it calls Military PowerPoint Karaoke in San Francisco on March 6 . Participants will take the stage to give a presentation based on military PowerPoint slides they’ve never seen, shuffled at random, and displayed behind them.
For those who can’t make it to San Francisco, allow me to show you some of the worst slides in the archive. Some of the presentations archived are outdated and offensive , others are painfully boring , all of them are garbage tier PowerPoint.
What’s even going on in this Air Force slide? It circled “simplification” at the top then didn’t take its own advice.
Here’s something from the Joint Improvised-Threat Defeat Organization—a department dedicated to neutralizing improvised explosive devices and drone-borne threats. Especially if those drones have been photoshopped to carry comically large cartoon bombs or video game gatling guns.
Look. We get it. Formatting is hard.
Every year thousands of birds slam into military aircraft. Every year the Air Force teaches its personnel how to scrape those remains and send them to the Smithsonian using a PowerPoint presentation.
Let the US Army teach you all about cid, hits, and microdots . Because there’s nothing more fun than mixing military service and powerful hallucinogens.
PowerPoint is terrible and no one should use it, but there’s a grotesque poetry to the Pentagon’s presentations. It’s a labyrinthine building full of soldiers, lawyers, strange acronyms, and obscure departments. PowerPoint is the perfect medium to capture all its contradictions and complications.
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The Best and Worst of Presentations in 2019
It goes without saying that we always have our finger on the pulse of presentations — the good, the bad, and the ugly. In order to contribute to the industry, we like to be in the know of what’s new, what’s trending, and what’s missing when it comes to both creating a deck and presenting it. The beauty of technology is that things are always evolving and changing, and as such presentations and public speaking are always improving.
So, as the year (and decade) comes to a close, we’re looking back at the highs and lows in the world of presentations. A year in review of sorts, in case you missed any noteworthy presentations or cringe-worthy decks in the past 12 months.
Without further ado, here is a round-up of the best and worst of presentations in 2019.
2019 Had Some Really Great Presentations
1. Srinivas Rao and The Unmistakable Creative — This year, Srinivas Rao, the popular author, host of the podcast, The Unmistakable Creative, and constant (and accomplished) keynote speaker shared his presentation hack with us. You guessed it: Beautiful.ai’s Smart Slides. In fact, he created his own Unmistakable Creative media kit in Beautiful.ai. Srinivas says, “Everyone said the media kit was breathtaking. Beautiful.ai is leaps and bounds better than the other products. I’ve even done online courses and slides in Beautiful.ai. It’s instinctive, it’s fast, and it’s nearly impossible to make a presentation hideous.” We do have to admit, his presentation style (and deck) is pretty impressive, earning a spot on our best of 2019 list.
2. Siqi Chen on Presentations — Siqi Chen, investor and CEO of Sandbox VR, knows presentations. He’s likely given and received his fair share of Pitch Decks. And while Pitch Decks are great (and wildly important for entrepreneurs), our favorite presentation from Siqi Chen is his presentation on presentations . Yep, you read that right. This year he created a 58-slide presentation sharing everything he knows about crushing presentations. It was great. He talks about the importance of storytelling, and how to provoke action from a presentation. It’s helpful to presenters of all levels, and visually appealing, which counts as a win in our book.
3. Meghan Markle in Cape Town, South Africa — It’s no secret that Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex, steals hearts worldwide every time she takes the podium. In fact, her speeches always seem to go viral from unwavering fans. But what makes her speeches so royally good ? Sure, what you have to say matters, but how you say it (and how well you connect with your audience) matters more. Meghan Markle isn’t afraid to get personal, she embraces local cultures and languages, and always makes eye contact with a smile on her face. Earlier this year she gave a heartfelt speech at a charity event in Cape Town, South Africa where she said. “I’m here as a member of the royal family, and as a wife, a mother, a woman of color. As your sister.” The crowd (and internet) melted.
And, Some Really Bad Ones, Too
1. Car and Technology — Okay, we have to admit, this presentation deck technically isn’t from 2019, but we discovered it in 2019, so that counts right? It’s the perfect example of what not to do, so we had to include it. This entire presentation screams “fail” from the lengthy paragraphs to the questionable image placements. Luckily, it’s virtually impossible to create a presentation this ugly in Beautiful.ai.
2. Kshivets O. Lung Cancer Surgery — Again, not a 2019 design, but cringe-worthy nonetheless. We’ll give these slides the benefit of the doubt considering they were created nearly 10 years ago, but all of the graphs and charts are a disaster. Your audience should be able to digest your data without getting a migraine, so overly-complicated charts are a no for us. And this presentation is nothing but complicated.
3. The Oscars Acceptance Speech — True, not a traditional presentation, but this acceptance speech has been pegged as one of the worst of all time. Why? When Greg Cannom, Kate Biscoe, and Patricia Dehaney-Le May accepted their award for the film Vice they took turns reading their speech off of a notecard. This sounds awkward, right? It gets worse. At one point, they got confused where one left off and where the other was supposed to pick up and as a result the speech got all jumbled. The key takeaways from this? Don’t read straight off of a card (or presentation slide), and don’t pass the microphone every other word.
All that to say, a lot has changed since 1987, including presentation software and stale public speaking styles. PowerPoint is so 2000 late. What looked good then certainly doesn’t look good now, and it shows. Kate McKinnon said it best on Saturday Night Live— in our favorite skit of the year— when she poked fun at PowerPoint’s pain points.
Cheers to another year of presentations, we’re excited to see what 2020 will bring.
Jordan Turner
Jordan is a Bay Area writer, social media manager, and successful blogger. Check out TheOceanMinded.com or find her on Instagram @theoceanminded.
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10 new year resolutions for your presentations in 2021, 7 companies crushing the future of work in 2021, 10 reasons to be thankful for presentations, seven new year resolutions that will help boost your career in 2020.
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- 1. Quite Possibly The World’s Worst PowerPoint Presentation Ever A Demonstration of What NOT to do When Creating and Using PowerPoint Slide Shows
- 2. How to Use this Presentation • Watch the slide show. • Gaze at the horrible examples of bad slide design and presentation. • Read the hints and tips slides that follow the examples to avoid making similar mistakes!
- 3. Chilean Exports • Fresh fruit leads Chile's export mix - Chile emerges as major supplier of fresh fruit to world market due to ample natural resources, consumer demand for fresh fruit during winter season in U.S. and Europe, and incentives in agricultural policies of Chilean government, encouraging trend toward diversification of exports and development of nontraditional crops - U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Economic Research Service Report • Chile is among the developing economies taking advantage of these trends, pursuing a free market economy. This has allowed for diversification through the expansion of fruit production for export, especially to the U.S. and Western Europe. Chile has successfully diversified its agricultural sector to the extent that it is now a major fruit exporting nation. Many countries view Chile's diversification of agriculture as a model to be followed. • Meanwhile, the U.S. remains the largest single market for Chile's fruit exports. However, increasing demand from the EC and Central and East European countries combined may eventually surpass exports to the U.S., spurring further growth in Chile's exports. • If you’ve read this far, your eyes probably hurt and you’ve been reading this tedious long-winded text instead of listening to me. I’m insulted- can’t you see I’m doing a presentation up here? Look at me! Congratulations, however, on having such good eyesight.
- 4. Too Much Text, and Font too small • Don’t put large blocks of text in your presentation. • Emphasize the main points. • Use pictures- PowerPoint is multimedia! • Use a large font…at least 30-point or more.
- 5. Beginner Motorcycles • My personal favorite: the Suzuki Savage • Light weight (~380lbs) • Adequate power (650cc engine) • Low seat height fits most riders
- 6. Bad Color Choices • Avoid loud, garish colors…dark text on light background is best. • Avoid text colors that fade into background, i.e. blue and black • Avoid color-blind combinations: – Red and green – Blue and yellow
- 7. Overwhelming Pictures • Use pictures, but don’t let them use you. • Keep slides SIMPLE! Too much diverts audience away from content. • Too many pictures also make saving a presentation difficult. • 1 or 2 pictures per slide is probably enough.
- 8. Racquetball Fundamentals 2, 3, or 4 players. 1 player serves, other “returns.” Only serving player can score. Served ball must land past serving line and cannot hit back wall. Ball can only bounce once before striking front wall…but ball does not have to bounce.
- 9. Using too much Slide Animation • Again, keep slides simple! • Apply one Slide Transition style and one Animation Scheme to ALL slides. • Don’t change between styles- a single style makes a presentation look unified. • “Busy” presentations divert audience attention from content.
- 10. FILE NOT FOUND • Microsoft PowerPoint is unable to open the requested file. This could be because your file is corrupted and/or this is an unsupported file type. Do you wish to retry or cancel? • Disk is unformatted. Click “yes” to format your disk now. • Boot startup failure, press any key to reboot.
- 11. Murphy’s Law Something WILL go wrong- test your presentation before you show it. Always have a backup of your presentation on hand. Be prepared to do the presentation without the PowerPoint…professionals ALWAYS print handouts for the audience.
- 12. More Presentation tips Talk to your audience, not the slides- face them! Don’t just read what’s on the board…we can read that. Use a visual presentation as a starting point. Avoid apologizing for a presentation shortcomings…press on. Leave time for Q & A.
- 13. More Presentation tips, cont. Check grammar! A presentation is the worst time to see missspelings. Don’t make too many slides…avoid the “slide rush” (trying to rush through the last 20 slides because you ran out of time). Cite your sources on each slide or at the end of your presentation. Remember: KEEP IT SIMPLE! It’s just a tool!
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Business School Presentations
Worst PowerPoint Slide in the World
If you think your business presentation slides are bad (they probably are), latch on to the good news that worse slides are out there . . . in fact, this post features the Worst PowerPoint Slide in the World.
But first, your personal slide curse.
Your personal revelation of your own bad PowerPoint slides starts innocently enough . . .
You click the remote and a new slide appears. You cast a wistful look back at the screen.
Perhaps you squint as you struggle to understand what’s on the screen. It’s almost unreadable.
Your mind reels at the thought that well, maybe . . . this slide actually is awful and should never have been included.
Take heart!
As bad as your slides are, they likely are not as bad as what lurks in corporate America or in the U.S. government.
New York Times Features the World’s Worst PowerPoint Slide
Your slides likely will never reach the bottom of the pit, the awful standard set by our friends in the U.S. government, who crafted and actually presented a monstrosity of such egregious proportions that the New York Times featured it on its front page in 2010 for no other reason than that it was an awful PowerPoint slide.
When the NYT considers your slide front page news, that is a bad slide.
The slide was actually used in a briefing to the commanding general of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Stanley McChrystal. It purported to explain U.S. counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, all on one slide.
That slide appears at the end of this post.
If you dare, scroll down to this heinous freak of design concocted in a government laboratory and completely undeserving to be shown in public . . . except on the front page of the New York Times as the exemplar of how depraved PowerPoint evil can be.
Our Bad Slides Usually Involve Numbers
We show numbers, lots of them. And at times we are tempted to believe that the “numbers speak for themselves.”
And so we whip out the tired, useless phrase “As you can see.”
The phrase “As you can see” is so pervasive, so endemic to the modern business presentation that it requires iron will to prevent ourselves from uttering this reflexive phrase-hiccup.
The bain of “As you can see” is that it is usually accompanied by a vague gesture at a screen upon which is displayed some of the most unreadable nonsense constructed for a slide – usually a financial spreadsheet of tiny, baffling numbers.
Probably cut-and-pasted from a written report and not adjusted at all for visual presentation.
The audience most assuredly cannot see.
In fact, there might be a law of inverse proportion that governs this syndrome – the less the audience can actually “see,” the more often the audience is told that it can see.
And that’s why we reach for the phrase.
Because we can’t “see,” either.
We look back helplessly at our own abstruse PowerPoint slide and realize that it 1) makes no sense, 2) never will make any sense, 3) is so complicated that we should have used four slides to make the point or should have deleted it, and 4) has no chance of contributing at all to our show.
Satanic Spreadsheets
You, the presenter, stare back at the screen, at the phalanx of numbers displayed on your unreadable spreadsheet .
Perhaps you grip the podium with one hand and you airily wave your other hand at the screen with the words . . .
“As you can see—”
And then you call out what seem to be random numbers. Random? Yes, to your audience, the numbers seem random because you have not oriented the audience to your material.
You have not provided the context needed for understanding. No one knows what you’re talking about.
Your classmates watch with glazed eyes. Perhaps one or two people nod.
Your professor sits sphinx-like.
And no one has a clue. You get through it, finally, and you’re relieved. And you hope that you were vague enough that no one can even think about asking a question.
“As you can see” Syndrome is the tacit agreement between audience and presenter that neither of us really knows or cares what’s on the slide. And we promise each other that there won’t be any further investigation into whatever this abominable slide holds.
It gives rise to the worst PowerPoint slides imaginable, because the incentive to excellence is removed.
This can’t be good. Not for the audience, not for anyone .
All of this sounds heinous, I know. And probably too familiar for comfort.
If the best thing you can say about your slides is that they’re not the worst PowerPoint in the world, then maybe it’s time to upgrade your expectations.
You can beat “As you can see” Syndrome with a few simple techniques that we be discuss in days to come.
Don ’ t vie for the worst PowerPoint crown . . . the remedy can be found in The Complete Guide to Business School Presenting .
. . . and here is the Worst PowerPoint Slide in the World, as honored by the New York Times . . .
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8 Tips to Make the Best PowerPoint Presentations
Bryan has worked in journalism and publishing for more than 15 years. For the last 10 years, he's covered the technology beat, including gadgets, social media, security, and web culture. Before working as a freelancer, Bryan was the Managing Editor for The Next Web. These days he spends his time at a number of publications, both online and off, including The New York Times, Popular Science, and The Next Web, among others. Read more...
Slideshows are an intuitive way to share complex ideas with an audience, although they’re dull and frustrating when poorly executed. Here are some tips to make your Microsoft PowerPoint presentations sing while avoiding common pitfalls.
Table of Contents
Start with a goal, less is more, consider your typeface, make bullet points count, limit the use of transitions, skip text where possible, think in color, take a look from the top down, bonus: start with templates.
It all starts with identifying what we’re trying to achieve with the presentation. Is it informative, a showcase of data in an easy-to-understand medium? Or is it more of a pitch, something meant to persuade and convince an audience and lead them to a particular outcome?
It’s here where the majority of these presentations go wrong with the inability to identify the talking points that best support our goal. Always start with a goal in mind: to entertain, to inform, or to share data in a way that’s easy to understand. Use facts, figures, and images to support your conclusion while keeping structure in mind (Where are we now and where are we going?).
I’ve found that it’s helpful to start with the ending. Once I know how to end a presentation, I know how best to get to that point. I start by identifying the takeaway—that one nugget that I want to implant before thanking everyone for their time—and I work in reverse to figure out how best to get there.
Your mileage, of course, may vary. But it’s always going to be a good idea to put in the time in the beginning stages so that you aren’t reworking large portions of the presentation later. And that starts with a defined goal.
A slideshow isn’t supposed to include everything. It’s an introduction to a topic, one that we can elaborate on with speech. Anything unnecessary is a distraction. It makes the presentation less visually appealing and less interesting, and it makes you look bad as a presenter.
This goes for text as well as images. There’s nothing worse, in fact, than a series of slides where the presenter just reads them as they appear. Your audience is capable of reading, and chances are they’ll be done with the slide, and browsing Reddit, long before you finish. Avoid putting the literal text on the screen, and your audience will thank you.
Right off the bat, we’re just going to come out and say that Papyrus and Comic Sans should be banned from all PowerPoint presentations, permanently. Beyond that, it’s worth considering the typeface you’re using and what it’s saying about you, the presenter, and the presentation itself.
Consider choosing readability over aesthetics, and avoid fancy fonts that could prove to be more of a distraction than anything else. A good presentation needs two fonts: a serif and sans-serif. Use one for the headlines and one for body text, lists, and the like. Keep it simple. Veranda, Helvetica, Arial, and even Times New Roman are safe choices. Stick with the classics and it’s hard to botch this one too badly.
There reaches a point where bullet points become less of a visual aid and more of a visual examination.
Bullet points should support the speaker, not overwhelm his audience. The best slides have little or no text at all, in fact. As a presenter, it’s our job to talk through complex issues, but that doesn’t mean that we need to highlight every talking point.
Instead, think about how you can break up large lists into three or four bullet points. Carefully consider whether you need to use more bullet points, or if you can combine multiple topics into a single point instead. And if you can’t, remember that there’s no one limiting the number of slides you can have in a presentation. It’s always possible to break a list of 12 points down into three pages of four points each.
Animation, when used correctly, is a good idea. It breaks up slow-moving parts of a presentation and adds action to elements that require it. But it should be used judiciously.
Adding a transition that wipes left to right between every slide or that animates each bullet point in a list, for example, starts to grow taxing on those forced to endure the presentation. Viewers get bored quickly, and animations that are meant to highlight specific elements quickly become taxing.
That’s not to say that you can’t use animations and transitions, just that you need to pick your spots. Aim for no more than a handful of these transitions for each presentation. And use them in spots where they’ll add to the demonstration, not detract from it.
Sometimes images tell a better story than text can. And as a presenter, your goal is to describe points in detail without making users do a lot of reading. In these cases, a well-designed visual, like a chart, might better convey the information you’re trying to share.
The right image adds visual appeal and serves to break up longer, text-heavy sections of the presentation—but only if you’re using the right images. A single high-quality image can make all the difference between a success and a dud when you’re driving a specific point home.
When considering text, don’t think solely in terms of bullet points and paragraphs. Tables, for example, are often unnecessary. Ask yourself whether you could present the same data in a bar or line chart instead.
Color is interesting. It evokes certain feelings and adds visual appeal to your presentation as a whole. Studies show that color also improves interest, comprehension, and retention. It should be a careful consideration, not an afterthought.
You don’t have to be a graphic designer to use color well in a presentation. What I do is look for palettes I like, and then find ways to use them in the presentation. There are a number of tools for this, like Adobe Color , Coolors , and ColorHunt , just to name a few. After finding a palette you enjoy, consider how it works with the presentation you’re about to give. Pastels, for example, evoke feelings of freedom and light, so they probably aren’t the best choice when you’re presenting quarterly earnings that missed the mark.
It’s also worth mentioning that you don’t need to use every color in the palette. Often, you can get by with just two or three, though you should really think through how they all work together and how readable they’ll be when layered. A simple rule of thumb here is that contrast is your friend. Dark colors work well on light backgrounds, and light colors work best on dark backgrounds.
Spend some time in the Slide Sorter before you finish your presentation. By clicking the four squares at the bottom left of the presentation, you can take a look at multiple slides at once and consider how each works together. Alternatively, you can click “View” on the ribbon and select “Slide Sorter.”
Are you presenting too much text at once? Move an image in. Could a series of slides benefit from a chart or summary before you move on to another point?
It’s here that we have the opportunity to view the presentation from beyond the single-slide viewpoint and think in terms of how each slide fits, or if it fits at all. From this view, you can rearrange slides, add additional ones, or delete them entirely if you find that they don’t advance the presentation.
The difference between a good presentation and a bad one is really all about preparation and execution. Those that respect the process and plan carefully—not only the presentation as a whole, but each slide within it—are the ones who will succeed.
This brings me to my last (half) point: When in doubt, just buy a template and use it. You can find these all over the web, though Creative Market and GraphicRiver are probably the two most popular marketplaces for this kind of thing. Not all of us are blessed with the skills needed to design and deliver an effective presentation. And while a pre-made PowerPoint template isn’t going to make you a better presenter, it will ease the anxiety of creating a visually appealing slide deck.
- › How to Set the Preview Image for a Video in Microsoft PowerPoint
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- › How to Insert a Check Mark or Checkbox in PowerPoint
- › How to Start a PowerPoint Slideshow
- › How to Match Colors With the Eyedropper in Microsoft PowerPoint
- › How to Practice Your Presentations with PowerPoint’s Presenter Coach
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- › Your Roku TV Is Getting a Major Update
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Career Center
Power up your PowerPoint
Seven research-backed tips for effective presentations.
By Mark Rowh
Print version: page 36
You knew it would be a bad presentation the moment a cartoon Freud tap danced across the presenter's first slide.
Whether it's animated .gifs, eye-straining charts or wild color combinations, we've all suffered through some terrible PowerPoint presentations. But do you know how to avoid making similar mistakes yourself?
Mastering PowerPoint may not top your to-do list, but learning to use the popular presentation software skillfully can help further your psychology career, says Richard Saudargas, PhD, who heads the psychology department at the University of Tennessee. "You will be giving professional talks at meetings as well as job talks, service talks and so forth," says Saudargas. "Learning to give an effective presentation is essential."
Research suggests that enriching your talks with graphs, charts and bulleted lists improves the amount of information your audience retains, says Taimi Olsen, PhD, associate director of the Tennessee Teaching and Learning Center at the University of Tennessee. "PowerPoint is effective, unless you mess up the [presentation] with irrelevant stuff," she says, pointing to a 2003 literature review published in Computers & Education.
What does work? Here are some tips to make your slides as solid as your research:
Write Your Speech First
Write your speech first, and only power up PowerPoint once you've drafted your talk, says David Levin, author of the 2009 book "Don't Just Talk, Be Heard!" "It's a mistake to use PowerPoint to plan the presentation in the first place," he says. That's because your slides are there to embellish your points, not make them for you, Levin says.
Lead with an Outline
Decades of research show that giving your audience an overview of your talk at the start of your presentation improves learning. So, start with a slide outlining your talk and your "take home" message. But don't return to your outline until the end of the presentation, say Nicholas Pandiscio, a New Jersey public relations professional. "An outline is a useful tool for making sure the material is coherent and flows well, but it should not be used as a placeholder to show the audience how far they are in the presentation," he says.
Use Sentence Fragments
Many presenters make the mistake of putting their entire speech on the slides, says Kelly R. Morton, PhD, a psychology professor at Loma Linda University. Instead, use your slides to augment your talk, she says. "If you can't elaborate on what they are reading, then you may not need to be present," she says.
Be Smart with Fonts
Text should be big enough to read, but not so big that it overpowers the slide, says Pandiscio. If you need to shrink the text to make it fit, he points out, you probably have too many words on the slide. Pandiscio also recommends using sans serif fonts, such as Arial, Calibri and Verdana. "They're easier to read and look better on computer screens or projectors than Times New Roman or Garamond," he says.
Use Graphs, Not Tables
To better engage your audience, convert words or numbers into diagrams and figures whenever possible, advises Moin Syed, PhD, a psychology professor at the University of Minnesota. "Tables are not amenable to quickly gleaning information, especially the big picture," he says.
Be concise. For example, if you want to discuss the clinical diagnosis guidelines for Prader-Willi syndrome, don't list all the criteria in a single slide — either select a few symptoms as examples or break the major and minor criteria into separate charts. "Too many words on a slide ... makes the audience members unable to hear what you are saying because they are too busy reading the text," Morton says. Also, stay away from animation or too much use of multimedia. However, photos or videos can be a plus, especially if they illustrate a procedure that is easier to show than explain, she says.
Keep the Human Touch
Dimmed lights and bright slides tend to diminish the personal connection between the speaker and the audience. That may seem desirable for shy scientists, but you'll be more effective if you make eye contact with your audience. "Don't be afraid to come out from behind your presentation and interact," says Erinn Leary Green, PhD, an educator assistant psychology professor at the University of Cincinnati.
After all, you — not the software — need to bring your subject to life. Too much dependence on slideshows can severely limiting, says Judy Primavera, PhD, a psychology professor at Fairfield University. "If you are a good teacher, PowerPoint can help you make the organization of your thoughts more transparent and introduce some bells and whistles that make the lesson more interesting," she says. "But if you are not a good teacher, it can be a crutch and short circuit any chance you have of learning how to connect with your students."
Mark Rowh is a writer in Dublin, Va.
Article sidebar.
- Can PowerPoint poison critical thinking?
Further Resources
Digital extras.
The worst PowerPoint presentation ever made (PDF, 521KB).
Comedian Don McMillan's PowerPoint pet peeves .
Further Reading
Bozarth, J. (2008). Better than bullet points: Creating engaging e-learning with PowerPoint ® . San Francisco: Pfeiffer/John Wiley.
Daniel, D.B. (2011). Practical PowerPoint: Promising principles for developing individual practice. In D. S. Dunn, J. H. Wilson, J.E. Freeman, & J.R. Stowell (Eds.), Best practices for technology-enhanced teaching and learning: Connecting to psychology and the social sciences (pp. 87–104). New York: Oxford University Press.
Fedisson, M., & Braidic, S. (2007). PowerPoint presentations increase achievement and student attitudes towards technology. International Journal of Information and Communication Technology Education, 3(4) , 64–75.
Kosslyn, S.M. (2011). Better PowerPoint: Quick fixes based on how your audience thinks. New York: Oxford University Press.
Tufte, E.R. (2003). The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint. Cheshire, CT: Graphics Press
Letters to the Editor
5 Top World’s Worst PowerPoint presentations
PCWorld recently published a content where people can vote what were the World’s Worst PowerPoint Presentations . Here we will summarize the top 5 worst PPT presentations and most voted ones. For this contest, the organizers got a few slides where people think that it’s okay to put 100 graphs on one single slide and the purpose of this contest is to let you learn from the presentation examples how not to make PowerPoint slides for your next big meeting or PowerPoint presentation.
The World’s Worst PowerPoint Presentation
Convoluted flow charts? Tacky, out-of-focus graphics? Huge blocks of text? Welcome to PowerPoint Hell.
The basic PowerPoint rules states that you should use a lot of bullet points but don’t overdo the text and avoid multimedia excesses. Many PowerPoint Guru may know about this but other people is still making bad PowerPoint presentations and these rules may not be obvious for other people. This persona of people include professors, teachers, buinessmen, etc.
1. Example mixing images and text in the same PowerPoint slide
This PowerPoint slide on puts all of its images in the background as a watermark image but too confusing with the text in front of the slide. The Ferrari mix with text in front and paragraphs of text overlaid on them accomplishes the difficult feat of making the images hard to look at and the text hard to read.
Instead of this, you may want to separate the image to the left, top, bottom or right of the paragraphs. For example, you can take a quick look to Formula 1 PowerPoint template where the Ferrari was put in the right of the presentation title. Unless you explicitly need to put text inside the image, in this case you can see donate car PowerPoint template . Also, adding some bullet points and reduce the text length could also help to share the message and overall idea about this presentation slide.
2. Social Networking chart in PowerPoint – Social Business Power Map
The flow chart presented here is simply baffling accordingly to the post review, and and the pictures don’t help much to share the message about what this chart means.
3. A Symmetrical Rainbow of Confusion
Clearly there are 4 main areas like Buzz, Experimentation, Adoption and Maturity, but what’s the difference between a one in a big black square and a one in a little red circle without a legend? Also, there is a mix of colors like the salmon, green, white and blue that is not so much clear in the Social Enterprise nad Social Web areas.
Colors are great for attracting an audience but six colors or seven colors can make this very difficult to understand without a proper legend. The colors in this “social business map” don’t clarify anything accordingly to the author of this review but, for example why are “Social Web” and “Social Enterprise” in different colors but “Cloud/SaaS” and “On-Premise” in the same color? Also, the whole chart looks like an alien Venn diagram , and the big labels along the bottom appear in random colors that correspond to nothing else on the chart.
4. Flow Chart on Steroids
In this PowerPoint example the left side of the slide on customer lifetime value in service contracts does pretty well. The text is in short bullet points, colors and fonts are restrained, and the presenter used a basic slide template . The author of this review recommends to use a PowerPoint template . Also, there is a criticism about the chart in this image. Accordingly to the review, the flow chart with red arrows do not explain what is going on in the maze of black arrows. The red arrows looks helpful except for the jarring overlay of red on black.
5. Wireless PowerPoint – Executive Summary
In this wireless PowerPoint we can see a lot of text as part of the executive summary slide for this Wireless presentation. This sounds like an endless “Summary”, filling an entire PowerPoint slide with text is never a great idea
The author says that it is a bad idea to use an impenetrable slab of 10-point text to provide an executive summary of the ensuing presentation. It’s hard to imagine what useful thing the presenter thought this slide would accomplish. No one is going to want to read the text, and if the presenter does so, what’s left to say in the presentation? The most chilling part of this cautionary tale? The audience hasn’t even seen the entire “executive summary” yet–it continues on the next slide.
This was a review for the article of Worst PowerPoint presentations that was featuring in PCWorld. You can read the full article in The World’s Worst PowerPoint presentations .
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What's the big problem with PowerPoint presentations?
University of Limerick
Opinion: building a talk around the type of slide show common in most PowerPoint presentations is a profoundly bad idea
There are probably people who have never sat through a PowerPoint presentation, and have no idea how blessed they are. Most business meetings, classroom presentations and the like are built around a speaker who will project a series of images on the screen, often long bullet-point lists of information or data and drone on about what these slides have to say. The worst presenters will post large chunks of text and read them to you, but even very good presenters will bore you into a state of near somnambulance with their presentations.
One of the main culprits is the ubiquitous piece of software called PowerPoint . There are competitors to this Microsoft product (such as Apple's Keynote presentation software), but all usually have the same features that make a PowerPoint presentation about as popular as a visit to the dentist for a root canal.
From The Office, when PowerPoint goes bad
PowerPoint is part of the Microsoft Office suite of software that includes word processing and spreadsheet programs ( Word and Excel ), and often the Outlook email program. PowerPoint, Excel and Word dominate the market so thoroughly that it is almost certain that you will have used at least one of these programs if you use a computer for work or school. Originally developed by the software company Forethought Inc. in 1987, PowerPoint represented Microsoft’s first major acquisition.
Originally, it was used to produce overhead transparencies and its second version could produce 35mm slides. By 1992, PowerPoint could be used with both Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows operating systems to produce wholly digital presentations and the world has unfortunately not looked back since.
So what is the problem with PowerPoint presentations? It's not the software. PowerPoint and its competitors do what they are designed to do well. The problem is that building a talk around the type of slide show common in most PowerPoint presentations is a profoundly bad idea.
From TEDxStockholmSalon, David JP Phillips on how to avoid death by PowerPoint
First of all, a talk built around a set of slides will take on a structure that inhibits learning and breeds boredom. Most presenters do a spectacularly bad job of assembling PowerPoint presentations because they follow templates and examples that encourage a method of presentation that just does not work. Any type of slide show is likely to channel presentations into a particular structure, where information is divided into discrete bits and where there is a strict linear follow from point to point.
There are two problems with this type of presentation. First, this linear, point-by-point style of presenting information is grossly inefficient, and it has little to do with how we process and learn new information. At its worst, a PowerPoint presentation can turn a cogent argument into a deeply boring and disconnected set of slides; the reworking of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address as a PowerPoint presentation is u nforgettably depressing . Second, this type of presentation is deeply boring in part because of its strict linear structure. Like a bad movie, a bad PowerPoint presentation is highly predictable, and audience members find themselves thinking "just get on with it" throughout the presentation.
The structural problems with building a presentation around a slide show are compounded by the fact that so many people do such a bad job preparing PowerPoint presentations. If you type "worst powerpoint slides ever" into a search bar, you will open a gold mine of bad ideas and, worse, good ideas presented badly .
From Rachel Willis, 5 tips for delivering a great online presentation
The list of ways PowerPoint slides can go wrong is long, but the usual problems include too much text, choices of colors for fonts and backgrounds that make it very difficult to read the text, superimposing text over images in ways that make both hard to process and overdoing animation. The task of presenting complex ideas, such as the timeline for a project, seems to bring out the worst in PowerPoint presenters, who allow silly or irrelevant artwork to dominate their slides.
Edward Tufte , the wizard of visualisation has strongly criticised PowerPoint for the way it channels thinking and stifles curiosity, but he has also suggested many ways of improving these presentations. First, kill the bullet points; where this is not possible, minimize them. Second, let the visuals tell the story. Consider Charles Joseph Minard's masterful depiction of Napoleon’s invasion of and retreat from Russia. The size of the invading army is shown in brown, and its losses as it progresses toward Moscow are apparent. The diminishing size of the retreating army is shown in black; the comparison between the starting and ending points of this campaign are stark and heartbreaking
Third, keep slides simple and visually interesting and informative. Tufte's books and papers show numerous examples of "chartjunk", irrelevant artwork that distracts rather than illuminating. Finally, if at all possible, turn off the projector. If you cannot do a clear and compelling talk without showing slides, that is often a sign that it will not be clear and compelling with slides. To be sure, a picture or two can sometimes help but, once you have learned to do without PowerPoint slides, you will wonder why you ever used them.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
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Avoid making the worst presentation slides ever Presentations are making a comeback in schools, colleges and offices. When the time comes for you to create your next presentation, use a template to make it look fun, slick, and professional, and avoid the trap of creating a slide that will be featured in a blog like this one day.
The World's Worst PowerPoint Presentations Yes, people who think that it's okay to put 100 graphs on one slide do exist. Learn from these examples how not to make PowerPoint slides for your...
More Presentation tips, cont. Check grammar! A presentation is the worst time to see missspelings. Don't make too many slides…avoid the "slide rush" (trying to rush through the last 20 slides because you ran out of time). Cite your sources on each slide or at the end of your presentation. Remember: KEEP IT SIMPLE! It's just a tool!
Your slide design is one of the first things that can make your presentation the worst PowerPoint presentation ever, so don't mess it up. Be careful, so it doesn't look tacky and unprofessional. It should reflect the topic and theme. 7. Being too formal Being formal in the right situation is great, as long as you don't become stiff and robotic.
So, here is our list of the five worst presentations of all time - and why they went wrong. 1. Lung Cancer Surgery PowerPoint Kshivets O. Lung Cancer Surgery from Oleg Kshivets Most of us have had to sit through some bad PowerPoints during our lives. They can make or break a presentation. Denying the most basic rules of good one can be detrimental.
The whole PowerPoint presentation on lung cancer surgery is pretty bad, but this slide showing 100 charts neatly stacked like coffins in a ten-by-ten array takes the cake. Not only are the graphs so small as to be unreadable, but did we mention there are 100 of them? Oh, and a slide heading that makes sense in English would've been nice.
2. This Terrible Graph Spam. Source: PC World (AU) I used this picture to illustrate why technical people suck at PowerPoint. I guess the point still holds merit if people think it's a good idea to make a slide that looks like this. Graphs and charts are a norm in presentations.
What all these bad PowerPoint examples have in common is that they lack the balance between engaging and clarity. Avoid "death by PowerPoint" and engage your audience. Use everything in your power to catch their attention and keep it. Microsoft offers a lot of resources to do that: colors, graphics, pictures, embedded videos, animations and so on.
PowerPoint is terrible and no one should use it, but there's a grotesque poetry to the Pentagon's presentations. It's a labyrinthine building full of soldiers, lawyers, strange acronyms, and...
The Oscars Acceptance Speech — True, not a traditional presentation, but this acceptance speech has been pegged as one of the worst of all time. Why? When Greg Cannom, Kate Biscoe, and Patricia Dehaney-Le May accepted their award for the film Vice they took turns reading their speech off of a notecard. This sounds awkward, right? It gets worse.
Great example of terrible powerpoint presentation David Dunn 3.8k views • 14 slides Bad PowerPoint Slides Koichi Sato 7.9k views • 26 slides Bad PowerPoint Example middletonat 79.6k views • 7 slides Bad POWER POINT hiratufail 20k views • 23 slides car and technology Anil Kumar 36.9k views • 30 slides
Quite Possibly The World's Worst PowerPoint Presentation Ever A Demonstration of What NOT to do When Creating and Using PowerPoint Slide Shows How to Use this Presentation Watch the slide show. Gaze at the horrible examples of bad slide design and presentation.
Productivity Harvard Just Discovered That PowerPoint Is Worse Than Useless Intuitively, anecdotally, and scientifically, PowerPoint may be the worst business tool ever created. By Geoffrey...
Worst Presentation Ever.avi - YouTube 0:00 / 3:41 Worst Presentation Ever.avi Ethan Rotman 227 subscribers Subscribe 1.7K 364K views 10 years ago A humorous look at a presentation...be...
Worst Presentation Ever! Quinten Hyde 8.23K subscribers 2.8K views 5 years ago Let me tell you what makes a presentation the worst presentation ever! There are many things that can influence...
The Worst PowerPoint Makes Us Squint The bain of "As you can see" is that it is usually accompanied by a vague gesture at a screen upon which is displayed some of the most unreadable nonsense constructed for a slide - usually a financial spreadsheet of tiny, baffling numbers.
A good presentation needs two fonts: a serif and sans-serif. Use one for the headlines and one for body text, lists, and the like. Keep it simple. Veranda, Helvetica, Arial, and even Times New Roman are safe choices. Stick with the classics and it's hard to botch this one too badly.
The worst PowerPoint presentation ever made (PDF, 521KB). ... PowerPoint presentations increase achievement and student attitudes towards technology. International Journal of Information and Communication Technology Education, 3(4), 64-75. Kosslyn, S.M. (2011). Better PowerPoint: Quick fixes based on how your audience thinks. New York: Oxford ...
The World's Worst PowerPoint Presentation Convoluted flow charts? Tacky, out-of-focus graphics? Huge blocks of text? Welcome to PowerPoint Hell. The basic PowerPoint rules states that you should use a lot of bullet points but don't overdo the text and avoid multimedia excesses.
If you type "worst powerpoint slides ever" into a search bar, you will open a gold mine of bad ideas and, worse, good ideas presented badly. From Rachel Willis, 5 tips for delivering a great ...