presentation-design git:20260828.f80dcb5A

Immutable. This exact content is served forever at /api/v1/blob/658d3af94e887590.

---
name: presentation-design
description: Designs slide decks, one-pagers, and marketing graphics that carry an argument rather than decorate one. Use this to build or fix a pitch deck, board deck, or conference talk; to design a banner, social graphic, or one-pager; or when a deck is dense, unfocused, or being read aloud from the slides.
---

# 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.

**On slides:** headline states the takeaway, not the topic — "Churn concentrates in month two,"
not "Churn analysis." If the reader only reads headlines, they should get the argument.

**Charts:** one message each, labeled directly rather than through a legend, with the axis honest.
Strip everything that is not carrying information.

## One-pagers and graphics

A single surface has one job: get one idea across at a glance, and reward a closer read.

- Establish a focal point immediately — largest element, most contrast, positioned where the eye
  lands first.
- Hierarchy in three levels at most. More reads as noise.
- Everything aligns to a grid, including the things that look like exceptions.
- Design for where it will be seen. A social graphic is viewed at thumbnail size on a phone; if the
  headline is unreadable there, the design has failed regardless of how it looks at full size.

## Never

- Read the slide aloud.
- Use a chart type because it is interesting rather than because it fits the comparison.
- Let a template's layout decide your argument's structure.