Slide deck design tips for presenting insights and data

Improving your slide deck design is a sure fire way to take the stories told by your marketing data visualizations from good to great. Whether you're working on a pitch deck or creating a marketing report, these 7 tips will make your slides a lot more attractive.

While it is never a bad idea to ask a designer to help you create the best slide deck imaginable, a simple shift in your perspective can have you building exceptional decks in no time without help as well. And the best part: your new found skill in creating great slide deck designs will make your marketing data insights shine.

“The result of investing in an important presentation is unparalleled in any other medium. When an idea is communicated effectively, people follow and change. Words that are carefully framed and spoken are the most powerful means of communication there is.”

Communication expert, Nancy Duarte in her book on creating powerful presentations, Resonate.

Types of slide deck

First things first: what is a slide deck for? Knowing what type of slide deck you’re making is key to ensuring the right balance of cleanly-presented facts and a bit of personality.

Pitch and proposal

Pitch decks need to have all the information your stakeholders need to know, but they also need to feel inspiring. It’s important that a strong sense of brand and vision comes across, but this needs to be balanced with the vital facts and figures.

Sales

It’s always important to know your audience in pitch decks, but perhaps most important for sales decks. Including company logos or customizing the information so it’s relevant for the prospect can mean the difference between a conversion or not.

Educational

Educational decks for businesses can be a great way to explain the stories behind successes, to share knowledge or summarize events. Internal decks offer you the opportunity to have more fun and be more playful with imagery, tone of voice and things like GIFs.

Conference

If you’re hosting a talk or presenting at an event, you want to make sure your conference deck stands out and keep people engaged. In a situation where attendees are watching hours of presentations, a little storytelling and personality goes a long way.

Reports

Reporting presentations, or our personal favorite – the marketing reporting deck, can be dry and heavy on facts. By choosing the right graph, and pulling out the right information, a less-is-more approach can give a report deck real impact.

Product demo

It’s not uncommon to see a product demo in a slide deck. It’s not the ideal way to share a product – the best is if you can get a real-life demo working for your prospect. But failing that, a slide deck can help explain the best features and user benefits.

Common slide deck mistakes

Let’s be honest: we all have pet peeves when it comes to slide decks. But if you can avoid these pitfalls, then you’re halfway to slide deck perfection. As Nancy Duarte points out in Resonate, presentations are the currency of business – and yet, most presentations are not great ones. So why do it? Because we know they have the power to inspire and influence. Here are some tips on how to avoid creating a dreaded boring slide deck.

Too much information

Adding too much to each slide means you have to pause on that slide for as long as it takes to explain all the elements. It’s much more engaging to break complex ideas down and keep the visual fresh.

Too much text

It can be tempting to write all the information and takeaways down in the slide, so it’s all there and nothing gets missed. While information can be helpful for people who get the deck without the presentation, it can look overcrowded and confusing.

Complexity

Zig-zagging between subjects, using lots of jargon or confusing charts can disorientate listeners and derail your narrative. It’s better to make one point clearly than ten points no-one will remember.

Cliché

Did you know that our brain activity decreases on both hemispheres when we hear worn-out clichés? But activity increases when we hear new metaphors, or engaging stories. So steer clear of cheesy stock photos and overused phrases in your work.

Reading the slide

Presenting can be nerve-wracking, and it can feel good to have all your notes right there in the slide. Keeping your notes separate will give a clearer, more engaging experience.

Personality bypass

Personality is like a fader on a mixing desk. Sometimes, it makes sense to crank it up and be a character, but other times it’s appropriate to dial it back. There aren’t many occasions (particularly in marketing) when you need to dial it back to nothing – and a little sprinkle of personality goes a long way.

Writing your slide deck

Before you even think about opening Powerpoint, Keynote or Prezy – you need to think about your content.

Write your content first

The best way to ensure you have a good flow and clear story is to write it all out in bullets first. Nancy Duarte says:

“My best advice is not to start in PowerPoint. Presentation tools force you to think through information linearly, and you really need to start by thinking of the whole instead of the individual lines.”

Go from messy to methodical

It all begins with a wall full of post-its – or a page full of notes. These are all your ideas that you want to include in your presentation. Once you have everything on the wall, you can start to remove unnecessary detail and cluster ideas together. These clusters are your key messages. These key messages become chapters in the presentation.  

Give it structure

Human brains love stories. In fact, storytelling triggers dopamine release. Our brains are wired to enjoy stories because that’s how our ancestors learned to survive and thrive. We can leverage that in slide decks to help ideas and facts land with more power. Good storytelling requires structure – whether it’s an old anecdote, a Hollywood movie or a marketing slide deck! Facts alone are important, but they won’t convince or connect – only stories can do that. As Seth Godin said: 

“The problem is this: no spreadsheet, no bibliography and no list of resources is sufficient proof to someone who chooses not to believe. The skeptic will always find a reason, even if it’s one the rest of us don’t think is a good one. Relying too much on proof distracts you from the real mission – which is emotional connection.”

Structure can be “three-act” as in: beginning, middle, and end. Or it can be more complex, following a similar AIDA advertising model. It looks like this:

Concept credit: StoryDoc

Add tension

Tension is the secret sauce that makes a story captivating. Nancy Duarte created a sparkline model that visualizes how tension should be added in presentations. It oscillates between what is and what could be – which creates an inspiring and energetic tempo to a slide deck or talk. 

Concept credit: Nancy Duarte

Slide deck design tips 

Now to the fun part: putting it all together. Here are 7 slide deck design tips for you to improve your work and create impact.

1. Start with impact

You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression. Your slide deck design is no different, and your opening slide is your chance to set the tone for your presentation. 

You are probably used to seeing standard slide templates that use a big image and a run-of-the-mill title. Take the image below, for instance. We’ve set up a title slide for a made up women’s e-commerce apparel brand called Mode House. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this opening slide. After all, it features a nice, professional image and contains all the information needed to understand what the presentation will be about. 

It doesn’t necessarily promise any ground breaking insights or reporting inside, though. Something about the layout may even feel a bit corporate. The good news is that there is a ton of room to increase the impact of this opening statement. Check out this slide deck inspiration:

Can you feel the difference? In the second option, we selected an image that’s all about impact and attitude. Also, based on the composition of the shot, it appears as though she is looking into the future. It almost makes you expect to see data visualizations that guide the way for further growth, right?

2. Everything has a place

When presenting your insights and visualizations, it’s very easy to fall into the trap of over labeling and over explaining the points you are trying to make. In reality, the visualizations in your slide deck presentation need room to breathe.

Every graphic has the opportunity to deliver an insight. As such, they should command attention on the slide. They should be the singular visual focus-point of the page. Any supporting visualizations should also be delivered on their own slide. 

In order to maintain the focus on your visualizations in your slide deck design, keep supporting copy points to an absolute minimum on each slide. Supporting copy should be limited to information that cannot be delivered vocally during the presentation. Additionally, any source citations should be near or at the bottom of the visual hierarchy. This way, they won’t be distracting. 

Remember, if this is a pitch deck, it is presumably a presentation that you will be delivering to an audience. That means you have the opportunity to explain the details of each graphic vocally, reducing the need to have tons of explanations on the slide design.

If there is a need to send the presentation to other stakeholders who weren’t present in the meeting, you can always add context and description in the speaker’s notes section of any given slide. If a reader needs even further detail, they may need to book a separate discussion where you both can dig into the reporting dashboard in detail. 

Sharing data in your slide deck? Read up about how to improve presentations with data storytelling.

3. Use emotions to increase impact

We all know that a picture is worth a thousand words. Some pictures are much more powerful than others, though. And powerful images can transform your slide deck design. 

Take transition or mid-presentation title slides for example. They serve as markers throughout the deck and serve to introduce new topics or concepts. Let’s say we want to set a marker in the middle of our slide deck presentation that queues up a particularly profound insight. 

Imagine we (a hypothetical board game company) discovered an emerging consumer profile of young families. They particularly enjoy playing our game after dinner. You could use a compelling image to illustrate the idea like in the example below. 

It’s nice, sure. But let’s take a moment to again crank up the volume on the emotional impact. 

Can you see the difference? The first slide design tells a story in a bit more of a literal way. It works, but the second option tells more of a story of a family connection. It should be obvious to your audience that this slide has something to do with our board game product. Instead of literally showing a family play the game, we instead focus on the ecosystem and atmosphere that the game is a part of. This way, we tell a richer story.

The second option ramps up the impact of your slide deck design. It draws the audience in, primes their attention for any visualizations on the next slide, and also elicits an equal emotional response. In the long term, this helps your audience remember the point you are communicating and can also increase buy-in. 

Also note that we've used white text to create good contrast with the dark background.

Images create a vibe – so don't worry about translating exactly what you're selling into one image. When Nike talks about shoes, they show the whole lifestyle around training, and the products fit in naturally – it's not just a simple product shot.

4. Devil's in the details

At this point, it should be pretty clear how much of an impact your main data visualizations and imagery can have on your slide deck design. It’s equally important to pay attention to the small stuff, though. 

Things as simple as clear labeling and typesetting can have a profound impact.

Imagine that you need to present a large portion of copy for approval. It could be a listing of campaign hashtags, the script for a Spotify Audio Ad, or the script for a YouTube ad. This slide will require a ton of copy and possibly some images. 

Clear and concise labels help your audience quickly understand what they are looking at, while also providing the important content as much space as possible. Additionally, as Funnel US Head of Data Operations Walter McHugh points out in this webinar, it’s also a good idea to make sure your labels are conveying the point of view or findings that you’re trying to communicate. 

Taking the time to typeset your slide deck design can also make a copy-heavy slide much easier to read. Your audience should see a consistent hierarchy that brings attention to important elements and identifies secondary information. In the first example below, the font choices and weights are quite similar to each other. The result is a slide that, on first glance, looks very overwhelming. 

However, by making more careful choices as seen below, that large block of heavy copy suddenly feels easier to consume. 

5. Break the rules - when necessary

We know what you might be thinking:

"My presentation templates don’t allow me to use big, sexy images."

“My fonts are already dictated to me."

"The brand guide leads to boring slide decks. And it is really hard to realize great design in my company’s 5-year-old Microsoft Powerpoint.”

The agony!

Well, your deck templates should be thought of as a guideline rather than something set in stone. Of course, it’s important to maintain the tone of the brand in your presentation deck. You should also maintain the core design elements.

However, your slide deck design should make your visualizations and concepts shine. If an element of your template works on one slide but not another, examine how you can adapt the template so it works more effectively. 

Your slide deck needs to tell the most compelling story about your insights as possible. What is more effective in your mind, a slide deck presentation that follows a template perfectly but comes across as expected, or a presentation that breaks the rules while jumping off the screen and inspiring your audience.

6. Let every slide communicate 1 core idea

Slides with lots of bullet points, who doesn't hate them?

We often try to add too many different ideas into a single slide, but the most powerful slide decks are different. They communicate 1 clear message. Sometimes the clear message is supported by 1 or 2 data visualizations, but not more.

Having only 1 idea on each slide makes it easier for the audience to follow along with the story you're telling.

Keep asking yourself: does this really need to be here? We have a tendency to add, but what's important is to only include what's absolutely necessary. That way, you slash your chances of having a bloated or boring presentation.

7. Keep it short

We recommend using ten slides or fewer. Is that even possible? Well, no, probably not. But if you have a ten-slide max in mind, you are less likely to end up with a 50-slide gargantuan. If you can’t say what you need to say in ten slides – ask yourself why not? Is this too complex for one presentation, do you need to break it down into three separate parts? Do you need so much detail? Can you contextualize anything to tell more of a story? Do whatever you can to cut it down and make it manageable – your audience will thank you for it! 

Bonus tip: Don't forget to practice!

It’s a rookie error to build a beautiful slide deck and go into your meeting without having read it through a few times. If you’re presenting at an event or a bigger meeting – a few out-loud practice runs, preferably in front of people you know and trust – will help you feel calm, confident and thus help your idea land with more impact. 

Every slide deck can inspire

As Nancy Duarte says: effective communication through presentations can change the world. Each time you are designing a slide deck, you have an opportunity to make a difference in your organization. 

From presenting marketing performance reporting or pitching your next business idea, your slide decks can push the story you are telling from good to great. 

Just remember, focus on emotional impact, don’t forget about the details, and don’t be afraid to color outside the lines. Your slide deck is a love letter to your work. While crafting show stopping presentations may seem like a dark art, it just takes a little shift in perspective. 

We hope these presentation design tips will help you create slide decks that inspire, and avoid 'death by bullet points'. If you like this kind of design inspiration, we’ve put together a handy and downloadable Google Slides deck containing all the examples in this article. Download it now so you always have the pointers nearby.