How to make your deck not suck.

Published in

Down the Rabbit Hole

5 min readOct 26, 2014

Until you get a designer.

I know you’re thinking, “Who cares? An investor doesn’t care about my ugly deck.” While that may be true to an extent, why not spruce it up and make a bigger impression. It doesn’t take as much time as you’d think.

Here’s a few tips to get your deck in tip-top shape, right in time for your next presentation.

Make it wide, baby.

This is the first and easiest step to make your deck sexy. Contrary to a weirdly popular and outdated belief, most new monitors, TVs, and projectors are actually widescreen (16:9, e.g. 1920 x 1080). So if your deck isn’t fullscreen, it’s time to update.

Once you get rid of those pesky black vertical bars you can add that pretty icon or chart you’ve been meaning to put on your new, bigger deck.

Instructions

Powerpoint | Keynote | Google Slides

Consistency is key.

Say it with me: brand identity guide. Even if you don’t have a formal one, you should have a clue on consistent elements you use for your brand and products. Guides are generally composed of: logo versions, color palettes, typography, imagery, and proportions.

Let’s check out Dropbox’s sexy online guide, for example.

Aw yiss, online interactive brand guides for the win.

Not only does it provide all the aforementioned elements, it expands on usage of the assets, additional artwork, and writing. You can even use this awesome online generator to get yourself started. Always keep your brand guidelines in mind as you’re working. If you forget, take a shot.

Resources

Guides From Around the World | Stylify Me | Designing a Brand Identity

“Design is more than just a few tricks to the eye.
It’s a few tricks to the brain.” —Neville Brody

Colors are your BFF.

You don’t have to french braid your favorite color’s hair, but definitely give it a good hug. Studies show that people recognize and retain more information with color than without. But you also don’t want it look like a unicorn puked all over it, or worse yet, bland and unmemorable.

There’s tons of color psychology and theories, some you might have heard in art class at some point. Red can show excitement or negatives, or blue with competence and quality. While learning the basics of this is actually very important, you should already have your brand colors picked out. Only use additional colors as emphasis. Remember, consistency.

Resources

Palettes: Colour Lovers | Adobe Color CC | Coolers
Theory: Forbes | KissMetrics | Smashing Magazine

Are you legible?

Never underestimate the power of good typography. I’m sure you’ve heard designers gripe about Comic Sans, Papyrus and the like, but for good reason. The font itself, placement, line spacing, and sizing all affect what you’re trying to convey on your deck. That’s why Medium is awesome. Clean, readable, and uniform typography.

Similarly to choosing colors, you want your fonts to be cohesive to your brand identity. However, since your deck is most likely going to be viewed on displays, sans-serif fonts (ones without the swooshy additional lines) are the most legible. Choosing one with various weights, such as Open Sans or Roboto allows you to accentuate certain words with ease.

Resources

Fonts: Abduzzedo | The League of Movable Type | Font Squirrel
Guides: Practical Typography | Thinking with Type | I Love Typography

“Design is an opportunity to continue telling the story,
not just to sum everything up.” — Tate Linden

You need space.

But really, it’s cramped in there. No one wants to read a wall of text or wonder why there’s so many numbers on your chart. White space, negative space, or whatever you want to call it: let the information breathe.

Maybe I do want to learn magic. I’m not Sherlock. I don’t have photographic memory. How can I read that and listen to you pitch it to me at the same time? Minimize and simplify your points by using less text.

When in doubt, utilize grids and margins to keep even and consistent spacing throughout your deck.

Resources

Adding Space to your Design | Foundations of Layout & Composition

Don’t. Use. Clipart.

And probably most stock photos, too. I know it’s tempting. I mean, it’s right there, Google images at the ready — your inner Clippy trying to entice you to “make your deck pop.” But no, don’t listen to him!

If you happen to say to yourself “that looks fake/posed/weird,” don’t use it. If it calls itself clip art, don’t use it. If it looks like something your great aunt would put in a “FWD:FWD:FWD:thisis so funny LOL!,” please for the love of all that is good don’t use it.

Make sure your deck pics to look natural and icons relevant. Simple is always better — you don’t want to overcomplicate or overwhelm your audience.

It doesn’t take long to search for nice (free!) icons and photos. Avoid random things you find on the first page of Google images. Just because it pops up, doesn’t mean it’s good for whatever you’re doing. Think modern magazine editorial instead of ‘90s Geocities imagery.