The look and feel

The look and feel of your presentation is important. It contributes to 2 important communication objectives:

1. Helping to make sure that your audience actually understands what you want (believe or not, many presentations fail to reach this threshold).
2. Helping to make the audience do something (buy your product, invite you to the next meeting in the fund raising process, etc.)
3. Remember your story

For all three of the above you could go for a “wow”-style presentation with no money,  animations, slick graphics, and other visual effects spared to blow your audience out of the room 

But the look and feel signals other things about you as well:

• Are you professional?
• Are you prudent with the investments people put in you?
• Are you trustworthy?
• Etc.

Some of my clients want a dense bullet point deck because it looks similar to all the other serious consulting and banker presentations they have seen. For most business presentations, you need to find that middle ground between the two extremes.