Design Better Pitch Decks to Win Projects

Never go into an interview with a bland PowerPoint deck. You will, without a doubt, feel less confident, bore your audience, and come across less professional than you truly are. Instead, dedicate a portion of your pitch budget to designing a creative, fun, humanized deck. You can work with a designer — like, ahem, me — to create a template that speaks for your specific brand and directly to your dream client. Create a customized deck that will support you not only for one target client next week, but also for years to come as you aim to make a stunning first impression and bring in more business. Form and function, working together as one.

1. Research

Know your audience. Conduct market research. Look up your dream client’s website, follow them on social media, chat with their secretary. Be curious and come up with questions as you make new discoveries. This will fuel your presentation direction.

2. Flow

Map out your presentation based on ideas and flow. Start her off with a fun story that relates to your audience, then talk about your company, your team, your services, and finally, your top 2-5 relevant success stories. Give juicy details, but be brief.

3. Dividers

Create divider slides. Give yourself a heads-up on shifting topics. Give your audience a breather, even if it’s only for 20 seconds. Let them recharge for the next bulk of info you’ve got waiting for them.

4. Hierarchy

Use text hierarchy. Don’t let fonts jump around (both literally and physically). Keep fonts consistent and aligned.

5. Simplify

Don’t overwhelm with too much text. You need to be able to present without reading word-for-word from the screen. Add the bulk of your presentation to the notes. Simplify for the screen. You want people to listen, not try to read along with you like in grade school.

6. Imagery

Sprinkle in imagery and memes, if it speaks to your brand. Keep it light-hearted, make it funny, have fun as you’re making it. Imagery has likely been suggested to you by your brand designer, and if it has not, reach out to me for a refresh! Pro tip: unsplash is free and has quality stock. Don’t use cheesy stock images. Holy crap-o-ly if I see another presentation full of photos that look like this, I will freak.

7. Animate

Don’t use wild animations. Clockwork and blinds are SO annoying and take up too much time. If you’re using animation, make sure it adds to the story you are telling. Edit the timing of the animation to make it feel more natural (0.25-0.5 seconds is the sweet spot). Keep it simple, but effective.

8. Feedback

Run the final product by your team or someone who’s opinion you trust. Don’t send it around to just anyone. You want to make sure you are viewing it from the point of view of your target audience, not necessarily Jan from HR who prefers purple to green.

9. Revise

Give yourself enough time to make final edits. Don’t rush your designer to get it done in a day. Presentations can take 2-4 weeks to complete to perfection — but I, my friend, can do it in 5-7 days if it must happen.