It seems like a simple brief: Just put together a few slides on the past quarter.
Yet all too quickly, unfocused PowerPoint presentations become bloated with bullet points and crammed with clutter. (Don’t even get us started on animation whiplash.)
But when your deck is clear, consistent and builds a strategic story? Stakeholders float through complex details – without being forced to work for meaning. Each slide lightens their cognitive load instead of adding to it.
Senior leaders don’t read. They scan. They decide fast. Respect that and ‘just a few slides’ become decision-making tools. Tools that secure funding, rally teams and move ideas forward. This is how you make it happen.
1. Design for your audience
Before you build your deck, be clear on who it’s for, what they care about – and how they make decisions.
While high-level strategy slides might soar in a boardroom, they will bore product teams in vagueness. Likewise, project deep dives will drown busy executives in unnecessary details.
Designing for senior leaders? Help them see what’s happening, why it matters and how they should act. Every slide that follows must bridge the gap between what you know – and what they need to know.
Put it into practice: Start by completing the sentence: After this presentation, my audience will... Keep it visible as you create your deck. Any details that don’t progress that outcome? Save them for the appendix or a follow-up email.
2. Build a narrative arc
Storytelling is one of the most ancient and powerful tools at your disposal. It’s how you turn dry data and abstract goals into memorable (and moving) messages. It’s how you engage hearts and change minds.
And the most effective slide decks are stories in disguise. Try building your story beats around this classic business case structure:
- Problem
- Why it matters
- Evidence
- Solution
- Next steps (who, when, how)
For hybrid meetings, include periodic recap slides so remote attendees stay aligned. One‑sentence section summaries prevent multitaskers from drifting – and keep everyone progressing along the same narrative arc.
Put it into practice: Build your deck around proven story formulas. (The Three-Act Structure and the Hero’s Journey may also suit your needs.) Early on, set aside 15 minutes to storyboard the arc of your deck before you design it in detail.
3. Combat cognitive overload
The golden rule of effective deck design? One message per slide.
Cramming several concepts onto a single canvas will only slow comprehension and tax your audience’s mental bandwidth.
(But wait: You’ve got oodles of insights to share? Superb. Use speaker notes for details your audience doesn’t need to be distracted by on screen.)
Scan for conjunctions like ‘and’ in your slide titles. This often signals two thoughts fighting for attention, which drains retention. Duplicate dense slides to give each idea room to breathe.
Put it into practice: Keep your live slides lean. Splitting slides might feel like bloat. But audience effort, not slide count, will define your deck’s efficacy.
4. Guide wandering eyes
Size, weight, colour and spacing all combine to steer your audience’s attention. But use contrast as a strategic tool. If everything is big and bold, nothing stands out.
Harness white‑space to let messages breathe.
Maintain a consistent visual hierarchy across slides to implicitly guide where readers will look next – freeing their brainpower to judge the content rather than decipher the layout. And aim for at least 24-point body text to aid readability at a distance.
Critically, design flourishes should amplify your message, not become the message. Stick to your brand colour palette (one accent colour is usually enough) and keep motion to a minimum.
Put it into practice: Spotlight the single message you want your audience to remember for each slide. Give this the highest contrast or largest font. Supportive details should retreat into lighter greys or smaller sizes.
5. Craft headlines like a journalist (not an academic)
Vague headlines force your audience to decode meaning. While descriptive headlines do that thinking for them. (And steer them towards your desired outcome.)
Aim to structure your slide titles around verb + subject + impact. The verb energises, the subject anchors, the impact answers: So what? Here’s how that looks:
- Forgettable: Q2 financials
- Fantastic: New channels boost Q2 revenue by 17%
Strong headlines also double as clear micro‑summaries for effective meeting minutes.
Put it into practice: Read only the slide titles out loud. If they form a coherent story arc without the body content? Your deck is in good shape for busy leaders to skim on the go.
6. Be consistent and on-brand, always
A single rogue font or a misaligned chart can make a multimillion‑dollar pitch look like a high school project.
Already have a rock-solid PowerPoint template? Beware the subtle edits that creep in when multiple authors, last-minute slides or old decks are stitched together.
Don’t yet have a branded template? Enlist a graphic designer to maintain deck consistency across your organisation. Create a handful of approved layouts, such as Title-only, Title + Content and Section Break.
Put it into practice: Tired of seeing off-brand, pixelated graphics pop up in your team’s presentations? At the end of the deck template, create a ‘hidden assets’ slide where your team can easily copy brand-approved icons and elements.
7. Bring your story to life with data visualisations
Data dumps and dense charts rarely persuade. But highlighted trends and annotated visualisations? They corroborate your story – and guide your audience towards logical next steps.
Use colour to spotlight need-to-know figures. And fade non‑essential lines to highlight each story beat, such as baseline, anomaly or forecast.
Pair your visuals with short labels or sharp headlines to increase the chance your insights stick. (This is known as dual coding: our brains process images and words through separate channels.)
And choose the right chart type to strengthen the story you want to tell:
- Showcase trends (website traffic) with line charts
- Compare categories (marketing cost per channel) with bar charts
- Breakdown proportions (budget by cost centre) with donut charts
Put it into practice: Ask yourself: What sentence should someone read aloud when this chart appears? If the answer isn’t obvious? Annotate or redesign the slide until it tells a self-evident story.
8. Review, rehearse, repeat
Return with fresh eyes to transform an ordinary deck into a polished presentation.
Start with these three high-impact audit areas:
- Flick through your slides to spot misaligned elements and inconsistent headline styles. (No one likes ROGUE Capitalisations.)
- Sharpen slide titles to land with max cut-through. Swap dull nouns for dynamic insights.
- Time yourself explaining the importance of each slide. If you exceed 20-30 seconds, then the slide is doing too much or lacks clarity.
Put it into practice: Rehearse with speaker notes hidden. If you stumble? The slide isn’t as clear as it needs to be. Tweak it until your delivery feels like a conversation – not an autocue recital.