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Don't blame the tool! If you don't tailor your communication to your audience, every presentation will be just a frustrating and agonizing experience. I agree with a lot of the comments being made here but from personal experience, I also disagree with quite a few of them. Not saying that they are wrong or right, it depends on the people you have to reach and the topic. Some prefer diagrams, some prefer tables with a lot of numbers and other prefer short bullet point lists but all are in the same room with you! Usually I try to anticipate this and have backup slides up in my sleeves just in case somebody doesn't get it. In general I use as less slides as possible but as a rule of thump I try not to use more then one slide per 3-5 minute presentation. Use large, sans serif fonts! If you have to excuse yourself because the slide is unreadable then don't use it or rework it until the last mole in the room can read it! Animations are a waist of time, unless they are absolutely necessary and serve a specific purpose but that's my personal view. The same for colours: Don't go too artistic! Once I had a project status presentation and it turned out that one guy couldn't differentiate between the colour red and green I used as status indicator (BTW: About 9% of men are affected but only 0.8% of women!). In the next presentation I added text to represent the status