How to get amazing presentations with AI

AI can build you a stunning deck in an afternoon. It can also hand you yet another presentation identical to the thousand you’ve already seen. The difference isn’t the AI: it’s what you ask for and how you work with it.

1. Why almost every AI-made presentation looks the same

When an AI gets no concrete direction, it picks the most likely option: system fonts, a purple gradient on white, three cards with icons and everything appearing with the same fade-up effect. That isn’t the AI failing; it’s its starting point. If you don’t say what you want, you get the average of everything it has seen.

The good news: you only need to close those doors explicitly and open others on purpose. That’s what a good prompt does.

2. Start with the message, not the design

Before thinking about colors, answer three questions:

• Who will watch, and what do they already know? A technical jury is not a group of first-year classmates.
• What do you want to achieve? Informing, persuading, selling or teaching change the order and tone of everything.
• What one sentence should they remember? If you can’t write it in one line, the AI can’t build the deck around it either.

Then apply a simple rule: one idea per slide. If you’ll be talking, keep visible text short (around 25 words per slide works well). If the deck will be read without you, it can explain more, but it’s still one idea per screen.

3. Give it real material (and forbid inventing)

The biggest risk of an AI-made presentation isn’t that it’s ugly: it’s that it has made-up numbers. AIs fill gaps with data that sounds right. To avoid it:

• Attach your material: notes, PDFs, the client brief, the professor’s rubric, your chart data.
• Ask it to confirm what it read before starting. If it doesn’t mention it, it didn’t read it.
• Forbid inventing data. In Promptazo prompts, anything missing shows on screen as ⟦PENDING DATA⟧, so you see it and fill it in before presenting.
• If you ask it to research, require a source for every figure in the speaker notes.

4. Ban the generic by name

Saying “don’t make it look generic” doesn’t work. You have to name what you don’t want. A list that works: no Inter, Roboto or Arial; no purple gradients on white; no three-card grids with icons; no decorative emojis; no default “glass” effect; no identical fade on every element; no generic stock photos.

And in return, require something concrete: big headlines with character, a single accent color per slide, atmospheric backgrounds (grain, noise, soft gradients, vignette) and a visual hierarchy that reads in two seconds.

5. Art direction in three decisions

Typography

Pick two fonts: one with personality for headlines and a very readable one for text. An expressive serif with a clean sans almost never fails. Typography does 70% of the work of making something look “expensive”.

Color

Three or four colors are enough: background, text, one accent and maybe a mid neutral. If you have brand colors, give them as HEX. If not, let the AI propose and justify its palette in one line.

Background

Dark or light is a context decision: in a room with a weak projector, a light background with good contrast usually reads better. What matters is that the background isn’t a lifeless flat color.

6. Motion with intent

Bold animation and 3D impress, but only with hierarchy. The rule that works best: one hero animation per slide, the rest subtle. 3D scenes (with Three.js) shine at key moments —cover, section break, an object or product, the closing— rather than spread across the deck.

Always ask for two technical things: respect the system’s “reduced motion” setting and provide a static fallback if the room’s computer doesn’t support WebGL. That way you’re never left with a black screen in front of your audience.

7. Work in phases and approve each one

The costliest mistake is asking “make me the presentation” and expecting it to come out perfect. Split the work:

1. Plan: what it understood, the slide list with each message, and what’s missing.
2. Visual direction: several radically different cover proposals. You pick one.
3. Build: every slide, then motion, then 3D.
4. Review: screenshots, ruthless critique and fixes.

Changing course at the plan costs one sentence. Changing it at the end means redoing everything.

8. Review it as the audience would

• Readability: at 1920×1080, body text should be at least 28 px and titles 64 px.
• Contrast: at least WCAG AA. When in doubt, the projector always makes it worse.
• Spelling: read it out loud. Mistakes show more on a giant screen.
• Test on the real device: or at least on a modest laptop at 1280×720.
• Have a backup: a PDF export of the slides in case something fails.

9. Claude Code or Claude chat?

Claude Code works on your computer: it creates the project, downloads libraries so it works offline, tests each slide in a browser, commits and can even publish on Netlify. Ideal if you want the best result and a terminal doesn’t scare you.

Claude chat, even on the free plan, can build the deck as a single HTML file with libraries from a CDN. If the answer is long, it delivers it in parts: join them in order into one file and open it in your browser. It’s the fastest way to start.

10. Final checklist before presenting

• No ⟦PENDING DATA⟧ left on screen.
• Every figure has its source.
• One idea per slide and one key sentence at the end.
• It works with arrows, click and in fullscreen.
• The backup PDF is on a USB stick.