PowerPoint Tips: How to Make Better, More Professional Presentations

Great slides aren’t about fancy design—they’re about clarity, consistency, and confidence. These PowerPoint tips are simple enough for beginners but powerful enough to improvete any presentation.

Align Everything—Always

Every element on your slide should look like they work together. Text, titles, shapes—if they don’t line up, your message gets lost. Use PowerPoint’s built-in guides, and make sure your fonts and formatting stay consistent from slide to slide. Pro tip: A simple cut and paste in PowerPoint automatically positions titles in the same place from one slide to the next.

Break up (with) your content

No one wants to read a wall of text while you talk. Simplify your slides by using bullet points, short sentences, or even just keywords. If it’s hard to read aloud, it’s too much.

One of our favorite tips is to break up complicated ideas with bullet points and short sentences. Visual slides with less text add emphasis and bring clarity, as well as keeping focus on the presenter.

Small details add big impact

Page numbers. A small brand logo. Clean slide footers. When you are thoughtful and attentive to all the tiny elements on your slides, it signals that you know what you’re doing—even before you say a word.

Signal what matters most

Bold it. Highlight it. Use color—but do it with purpose. Not every piece of content is of equal importance, so make the key parts pop.

Structure to tell a story

A presentation shouldn’t just be a series of slides: it’s a cohesive story that builds piece by piece. So don’t think of your content as individual chunks of information, think of them as chapters in a story. Titles should build on each other. Visuals should support your flow. Tell a clear beginning, middle, and end.

Don't be boring

The fact is that most slides pretty much look the same. So skip the default templates and ditch the cheesy stock photos. Even just a little visual polish goes a long way.

Bonus PowerPoint tip #1: Be bold

It’s no coincidence that “bold” is in our name and in our approach to presentations: that’s because it works. One of the biggest problems with presentations is that they all start to look the same after a while. The same built-in templates, the same text-heavy style, the same generic stock photos.

If your audience has sat through nearly identical presentations dozens if not hundreds of times, then it’s going to be a challenge to catch their attention with yet another forgettable set of slides.

So the first thing to learn as you practice how to make a great presentation is to be bold in your approach, and don’t be afraid to put your personality into your work. Choose strong, memorable images; write catchy, attention-grabbing headlines; include authentic stories and personal touches.

Bonus PowerPoint tip #2: Take a break

One of the best ways to improve the quality of your work is to complete a draft, then step away for a bit. Coming back to your presentation the next day is ideal, but even just giving yourself an hour will help to create the distance you need to take a fresh look at your work.

Often, we’ll complete a presentation and think it’s our best work yet, with snappy headlines, crisp designs, and a memorable flow from start to finish. But on reflection, we notice that some of the headlines are repetitive, the designs feel a little flat, or that it lags a bit in the middle.

All of these problems didn’t appear when we first finished our draft, but with a bit of space, they were immediately apparent. And your audience, who is only seeing the final version one time, will definitely notice those same issues.

So create, pause, and review. This simple process change will help you improve everything you work on, but your PowerPoint presentations will see a huge boost in quality as a result.

Want to step up your presentation game?

Explore more of our expert resources on presentation visuals, storytelling, and PowerPoint best practices:

• Presentation Design 101 – Learn the basics of slide design that make the biggest impact

• Presentation Training – Tips to become a more confident, persuasive presenter

• Storytelling – Craft narratives that connect with any audience

• Presentation Design Tips – From layouts to colors, get smarter about slide visuals

About the author

Danielle John is the founder of VerdanaBold. She has more than 25 years as an award-winning designer and creative lead, directing the visual expression and production of thousands of high-value new business pitches, C-level presentations and internal presentations for major global brands. When she’s not busy at VerdanaBold, she can be found antique shopping and spending time with her husband and two kids.