Good presentation design comes down to three moves: one idea per slide, a visual hierarchy that tells the eye where to look first, and a story arc that gives the audience a reason to care. Get those right and even plain slides work. Get them wrong and no template can save you.
Here's how we approach deck design at Dee7, from the first outline to the final pitch slide.
Why does story beat decoration?
People don't remember slides. They remember what the slides made them feel and the one or two points that stuck. In Prezi's 2018 State of Attention survey, a majority of business professionals said a strong story is what captures and holds their focus during content like presentations.
So before you open your design tool, write the story in one paragraph: the situation, the tension, the resolution you're proposing. Every slide either moves that story forward or gets cut.
How do you design a presentation, step by step?
- Define the objective. One sentence: "After this deck, the audience will ___." If you can't fill the blank, you're not ready to design.
- Know the room. A deck for engineers and a deck for investors can cover the same product and share almost no slides.
- Outline before you design. Write slide titles as full statements ("Churn drops 40% after onboarding redesign" beats "Results"). If the titles alone tell the story, the structure works.
- Pick one theme and stay in it. One or two fonts, a small palette, consistent layouts. Your brand guidelines should decide this for you.
- Replace text with visuals where you can. A chart, a screenshot, or a simple diagram beats a paragraph. We covered how to make numbers readable in our post on data visualization.
- Cut the text that's left. If you'll say it out loud, it doesn't need to be on the slide. Slides are signposts, not scripts.
- Rehearse with the deck, then edit again. The slides you stumble over are the ones that need fixing.
What makes a good slide layout?
Layout is where most decks fall apart. The rules that matter:
- One idea per slide. Adding a slide is free. Cramming two points onto one costs you both.
- Build a hierarchy. The most important element should be the biggest or boldest. The eye should know its path in under a second.
- Leave empty space. Whitespace is not wasted space, it's what makes the content legible. Same principle as on a website: we unpack it in our guide to white space.
- Keep type big and plain. If the back row can't read it, it's decoration. Guy Kawasaki's well-known 10/20/30 rule suggests nothing smaller than 30 point font, and it's a decent floor for any room.
- Align everything. Ragged edges read as sloppy thinking. Use the grid your tool gives you.
- Go easy on animation. One consistent transition, used sparingly. Movement should reveal information, not perform.
- Test on the worst screen. Projectors wash out subtle grays and thin fonts. Check contrast before the meeting, not during it.
What makes a pitch deck different?
A pitch deck is a sales document with a time limit. The design rules above still apply, but the stakes change a few things:
- It's often read without you. Investors forward decks. Every slide needs to make sense cold, so write headlines that carry the argument on their own.
- Brevity is credibility. Kawasaki's 10/20/30 rule exists because he sat through thousands of pitches: around ten slides, twenty minutes, nothing under 30 point type. Treat it as a budget, not a law.
- The ask is a slide, not a footnote. End with exactly what you want: the amount, the partnership, the next meeting.
- Design is part of the pitch. A deck that looks considered signals a team that ships considered work. The reverse signal is just as loud.
- Study real decks. Several famous startups, Airbnb among them, have had their early pitch decks shared publicly. Reading them teaches you more than any template gallery.
If you present regularly, it's worth building a reusable system of branded slide layouts instead of starting from scratch each time. We wrote about that in professional presentations.
FAQ
How many slides should a presentation have?
As many as the story needs, as few as the time allows. For a 20 minute pitch, around ten content slides is a sane budget. For a talk, one slide per minute is a common ceiling.
What font size should I use on slides?
30 point or larger for body text in a presented deck. If that forces you to cut words, good. That's the point.
Should I use a template?
Templates are fine for structure, risky for identity. Start from a template if it helps, then replace its colors, fonts, and layouts with your own brand so the deck looks like you, not like the tool.