I am currently doing a master study in marine biology. Most of the slides in presentations I see (from students as well as teachers) are extremely cluttered with information and visually completely unappealing. There was never another approach than using Microsoft's Powerpoint as a presentation tool. While some teachers obviously focus on complete information on their slides I often wonder what the purpose of him or her being present and giving the lecture may be.
I recently started to do presentations in Inkscape (exporting them as single images), focused on very few words and a more or less appealing design (choosing colour themes, big text, little graphics, etc). While I'm sure I didn't do a perfect job I never got any appreciation that my presentation was liked in the way of design. However, I didn't do many and have not much experience in other fields of science.
Therefore I wonder what your experience is with simple slide design (rather than cluttered Powerpoint slides) in regard to science. Is it really worth to put some thoughts and time into design or do people nevertheless don't pay any attention to that?