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Creating Backgrounds
Let's talk about how to choose or create an appropriate background for your situation. Here are four key guidelines to follow.
Make It Readable
What does this mean? Many backgrounds are so busy with swirling figures and pictures that text or charts put on top of the backgrounds are unreadable. A gorgeous design of swirling flower-like images might be excellent without any images on top of it. But when text and product photos were put on top, there was no focal point left on the slide. This very busy background might have made an excellent first slide or cover slide, but after that, the images needed to be put on the slide with clear space in the middle for the text and photos.
Make It Appropriate
All major presentation programs come with a variety of ready-made templates. The reality is that most of these should never be used in business. Consequently, presenters have to purchase business templates. Some of these are beautiful and very professional. Here are some key considerations in selecting a template design for business use.
Choose the Appropriate Corporate Image. What type of image do you want to project? Conservative, aggressive, or futuristic? For example, a plain blue background is a conservative image.
Choose the Appropriate Colors. You only have two choices: a light background or a dark background. Perhaps around the edges of the slide you can vary it, but in the center, where the text goes, you need either dark or light.
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With a dark background you must use yellow or white letters so the audience can read them. With a light background you can use black, dark blue, green, or purple letters so the audience can read them. Don't use a background that starts light at the top and ends up dark at the bottom. Why? You then have to use dark letters at the top on the light background and then light letters on the bottom for the dark background. Now the slide looks inconsistent. Always ask yourself which colors have the best contrast, then use them.
Note that about ten percent of the male population and five percent of the female population is red/green color-blind, so they won't be able to see thedifference between red and green on the screen. Red and green elements next to each other are indistinguishable to color-blind people.
You have fewer color choices than you think. Look at the color chart in your software program. Most of you will not be using the pinks, the light greens, the reds, or the browns in your presentation. Red is a warning color in many cultures so you don't want to use that as an accent color or as a background. When you take out those colors, you don't have that many choices.
Some people like black as a background color. It is very solemn. It is also not very interesting to look at for hour after hour. You want to keep your audience awake. On the other hand, a white background isn't that interesting either. If you use white so that you can show your charts and technical data, make the edges of the slide a color or design.
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