Presentation Zen Design: Simple Design Principles and Techniques to Enhance Your Presentations (Voices That Matter)

by Garr Reynolds

Slide background color: light or dark? For large keynote presentations at conferences, for darker venues (Pecha Kucha Nights or Ignite events, for example), and for larger venues, use a darker slide background since white light on the background can be blinding in an otherwise dark room. Most situations, however, such as those in college lecture halls or in school classrooms, have enough ambient light to justify a white or light background. The advantage of using a white background is that you can use stock images without having to take time to remove the white backgrounds. (PowerPoint and Keynote come with tools for removing a selected color from an image, such as a white background, but their tools do not do as smooth a job as more professional editing software.) Regardless of the type of background you choose, what matters most is maintaining clear contrast between the background and the foreground elements. It’s important to pay attention, then, to the levels of contrast among the foreground elements and the background.