Slide backgrounds are important, but only to help frame the ideas in the forefront. They may give texture, beauty, or reinforce subtle themes, but they should remain, as their name implies, in the background.

In general, it is a good idea to create the background of the Master slide last. After you have created most of your slides, you will know what type of background you need. For example, if you have numerous charts, a clean, simple background is mandatory. On the other hand, if your presentation ends up with mostly text slides, a spicy background can be perfectly in order. If you just feel the need to get your artistic juices flowing early in the process, create the background for the Title master. Chances are the title slides will only carry text, so just about any background can be made to work effectively.

Using Different Backgrounds

Most of the time you want the background of a single presentation to be consistent throughout. Of course, you may suppress an element or two on specific slides, but most slides should stay with the same background. This provides consistency and allows the audience to focus on your message.

When you are working with a long presentation, you may want to alter the backgrounds based upon sections of the presentation. Following is a simple illustration.

Case in Point

These slides are part of a four-hour training presentation on the Sales Cycle of a particular software. The Sales Cycle is broken down into six key areas: awareness, interest, desire, intent, action, and ownership. There are 87 slides in this presentation! Imagine how bored audience members would be if every slide looked nearly the same. On the other hand, if slides looked radically different from one another, it would be very difficult to maintain a cohesive theme. What is the answer here?

Awareness: Slides that fall under the "awareness" stage of the cycle use this background.

Interest: Slides that fall under the "interest" stage of the cycle use this background.

Unfortunately, this presentation was written under an extremely tight deadline, so fancy graphics were out of the question. Instead, the presenter used a simple text graphic and changed the background color. This helped provide a sense of organization to an extremely long presentation.