8 Deck-Making Tips for Non-Designers

If you work in marketing and communications, you likely regularly need to create or contribute to a presentation deck. And unless you’re a graphic designer who also writes, you may struggle to pull together the right words and visuals into an effective presentation.

Creative presentations aren’t just about designing slides — it’s also about how you deliver that information and facilitate conversations around your ideas. Let’s take a look at eight important tips to consider when creating your next deck so you can successfully communicate and sell your ideas, even if you have little to no design experience.

Why Design Matters

Perception is everything, especially in business, and a great-looking presentation with a memorable story will help yours stand out from the others. In many ways, your deck is your business card — and if you have an amazing design with a captivating story, people will remember you long after the presentation is over.

The problem is that most folks are stuck in the world of preexisting templates — which limits your ability to be creative and allow your message to dictate the presentation. Instead, you end up letting the existing layouts decide what to include for you.

1. Start With Your Message
2. Keep It Simple
3. Source Quality Images
4. Use Contrast
5. Use Color Blocking
6. Be Consistent
7. Go Easy on Your Audience
8. Create a Second Version

1. Start With the End in Mind

So ditch the templates and start with your primary goal and main message instead. Before you even open PowerPoint, the first thing you need to do is determine the single most important idea you want your audience to remember from your presentation. Then structure your supporting points around it.

In this article, we walk you through creating an outline to help save time, speed through the approvals process, and get valuable insights that will help guide your presentation.

2. Keep It Simple

If you’re not a designer, do yourself a favor and keep the design simple. Create three to five slide layout styles, and then work within those for the entirety of your presentation, only veering from them when it’s absolutely critical to get a point across.

Keep your visuals simple and consistent throughout the deck too. For example, make all of your photos black and white and add an occasional pop of color. As for fonts, Helvetica is always a safe option, and you can pair it with a simple serif font like Garamond or another system font.

3. Source Quality Images

High-quality, high-resolution images will give your presentation the polished look that you simply cannot get from poor-quality or low-res media. Consider investing in some stock photography that supports your presentation.

Or, if cost is an issue, you can find plenty of high-quality images here, where we’ve rounded up links to several free resources for building your presentation, including videos, fonts, and other presentation tools.

4. Use Contrast

We’ve talked before about using contrast in presentations; pairing contradictory images, ideas, and slide types can help capture your audience’s attention more effectively than a monotone presentation.

As you map out the flow of your presentation, use contrast to alternate dense, content-heavy slides with a slide or two featuring just a few details. Not only does this keep your audience engaged, as they won’t know what’s coming next, but it lets them breathe a bit so you’re not bombarding them with information.

5. Use Color Blocking

To help your audience understand when you’re moving from one section to another, use chapter slides and color blocking in between sections. For example, flood the page with a bold color and put the name of the next chapter on it.

That way, your audience will know that you’re moving on from one subject to the next — which is especially important in cases where you’ll be emailing your deck or otherwise not be there to present it. And with a live talk, color blocking quickly reengages your audience, like a big road sign that helps people navigate through your presentation.

6. Be Consistent

It’s also helpful for your audience when you keep your section titles in the same place from slide to slide, using the same color that you’ve chosen for your chapter slides. In general, keep your colors consistent and use the same set of fonts so your layout looks cohesive.

Moving things around on your audience will only create confusion and make you look unprofessional. Keep it clean and consistent, and you’ll avoid the sloppiness that can arise from changing up your color scheme and design elements.

7. Go Easy on Your Audience

This is a simple tip that tends to get lost in the effort to cram as much information as possible onto slides: Don’t make your audience work too hard — they are trying to absorb a lot of knowledge at once, and having empathy for them ensures you don’t overwhelm them with too much information.

One of the easiest ways to do this is by using as little text as possible on your slides when giving an in-person presentation. In other words, don’t make them try to read and listen to you at the same time. Instead, let them hear you talk, because you’ll be able to fill in the details, convey emotion, and tell a memorable story in a way that slides and text cannot.

8. Create a Second Version

Once you’ve created your presentation, build a separate version that you can email to your audience. Simply go back through your deck and find the areas where you think people will need additional information, and then fill in the blanks by building additional slides or adding some of your presenter notes to existing slides.

This way, you enable senior leadership, clients, or any target audience to read and digest the information on their own time, at their own pace. This deck doesn’t rely on you presenting but provides additional information to help strengthen your message outside the context of a live presentation.

Deck Making: Both Art and Science

Deck making is one of the most critical yet underrated skills in marketing and communications. Crafting a success presentation to sell your ideas, share results, or communicate a strategy is crucial to persuading others. Yet we’re never taught how to do this in college or even at work.

Follow the tips above, and you’ll be well on your way to creating successful presentations, even if design is not your forte.