Presentation design

Decks

The deck is not the talk. Slides that contain the argument make the speaker redundant and the reader confused. Decide which artifact you are making — a spoken-support deck or a read-alone document — because they have opposite rules and the hybrid fails at both.

One idea per slide. If a slide needs a sub-argument, it is two slides. The cost of an extra slide is zero; the cost of a crowded one is that nothing on it lands.

Structure carries more than styling:

1. Open with the change in the world that makes this matter now.
2. State the problem in the audience's terms, not yours.
3. The argument, in the smallest number of steps that hold.
4. The evidence — one chart per claim, not a dashboard.
5. The ask, stated explicitly. A deck that ends without an ask was a briefing.