majiayu000 Presentation design
Decks
The deck is not the talk. Slides that contain the argument make the speaker redundant and the reader confused. Decide which artifact you are making — a spoken-support deck or a read-alone document — because they have opposite rules and the hybrid fails at both.
One idea per slide. If a slide needs a sub-argument, it is two slides. The cost of an extra slide is zero; the cost of a crowded one is that nothing on it lands.
Structure carries more than styling:
- Open with the change in the world that makes this matter now.
- State the problem in the audience's terms, not yours.
- The argument, in the smallest number of steps that hold.
- The evidence — one chart per claim, not a dashboard.
- The ask, stated explicitly. A deck that ends without an ask was a briefing.
On slides: headline states the takeaway, not the topic — "Churn concentrates in month two," not "Churn analysis." If the reader only reads headlines, they should get the argument.
Charts: one message each, labeled directly rather than through a legend, with the axis honest. Strip everything that is not carrying information.
One-pagers and graphics
A single surface has one job: get one idea across at a glance, and reward a closer read.
- Establish a focal point immediately — largest element, most contrast, positioned where the eye lands first.
- Hierarchy in three levels at most. More reads as noise.
- Everything aligns to a grid, including the things that look like exceptions.
- Design for where it will be seen. A social graphic is viewed at thumbnail size on a phone; if the headline is unreadable there, the design has failed regardless of how it looks at full size.
Never
- Read the slide aloud.
- Use a chart type because it is interesting rather than because it fits the comparison.
- Let a template's layout decide your argument's structure.