Craft your message
Strong opening
Gather data
Simple and easy-to-grasp text
Examples, facts and numbers
Edit
Whatever the design, your message comes first. So, figure out what you want to say from the beginning. To set out your intentions efficiently, use the points below.
Stick to a plan
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Create an easy-to-follow structure
Create a strong opening to grab attention
Keep text simple and easy-to-grasp
Gather data to support your offer or idea
Two pitch decks: one to send and one to show
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Create an easy-to-follow structure
When presenting your ideas, story is everything. What’s the difference between a story and a phrase? Framing. Every story has a plot, a beginning, and an end. A consistent and structured narrative is crucial for information delivery, regardless of the purpose behind your pitch deck.
Make a single point
Stick to a plan
Make a single point
To hold viewers’ attention is a tricky thing. One of the most effective tools you have is to make only a single significant statement at a time. There is an easy way to make sure your presentation isn’t trying to cover too much ground: the essence of everything you have to say can fit into one sentence without inconsistencies or contradictions.
Don’t bother your audience with things they already know. Keep content short and focused, entertaining but to the point.—Andreas Haase, Founder of Hello&Goodbye design studio
Stick to a plan
Even a weekly report can sound as fascinating as a Marvel movie when planned and structured well. Frame your information wisely, and make sure even your dog could understand why it starts and ends where it starts or ends. Deliver your message in the middle.
You might start by writing down all your key ideas in a text file. Group them by topic, begin with the most simple statement and build up to more complex ideas. Highlight important facts and get rid of what seems secondary. Your main points can eventually serve as subheadings, as they do here.
A clear and simple outline of a pitch deck from Argyle, a technology company that provides consumer-permissioned access to income data
Depositphotos' report on yearly trends
A major to minor generalization trajectory helps form a good plot structure for this portfolio presentation
Take a closer look at templates for a pitch deck, annual report, design agency presentation and educational slide deck.
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Create a strong opening
The first 5 minutes of a presentation is your chance to win an audience's attention by setting the mood or highlighting the most important aspects of the project. That is why your introduction should be explanatory, clear, catchy and even slightly entertaining. Here are some ready-made solutions for quick decisions:
State a fact
Make a joke
Ask a question
State a fact
Or make a clear statement / provide statistics. Making a solid point gives a super universal opening for any narrative, but works best for presenting project results in business-related presentations.
Make a joke
Both topic-related and hilarious jokes are brutal to find or come up with. But if you do, consider your presentation a success; you nailed it. Two small tips though. 1. You don’t have to be self-destructive to be funny. 2. Memes and GIFs can also go a long way.
Ask a question
It goes back to the ancient Greek principles of rhetoric. If you ask the right question about the information you are planning to share, everything that follows is just an answer to the question on the first slide.
A good pitch should include a strong opening, powerful storytelling through design and images that support your content. The best presentations keep the viewer engaged throughout, so it's critical there are storytelling devices that can maintain momentum.—Tarik Fontenelle, Director, ON ROAD

An opening with a question used in IDEO.org 10-year impact report
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Keep text simple and easy-to-grasp
The most important text in your presentation is typically the spoken portion. Keywords, phrases, and headings in the actual presentation only support, highlight or emphasize the point you’ve already made. For text that is required in the presentation, here is what you need to do:
Less is more
Edit
Stick to your chosen tone of voice
Less is more
Keep the text on each slide to a minimum—keywords and bullet points, not sentences. Images and infographics work better than words in slide decks.

A presentation of the Track & Field Collection celebrating the all-comers' spirit of track and field with masterful visuals
We prioritize consistency and simplicity by distilling the idea to its simplest form. It's important not to overload the reader with too many interactions and different styles. In other words, don't have too much going on. Less is more! Pick a few interactions and explore them fully, define your typographic styles and stick with them throughout.—Ric Bell, Creative Director, and Christina Twigg, Designer at POST Studio
Edit
To edit means sharpening your point by using the most suitable intonation, word choice, and syntax constructions. It is particularly important when working on the slide’s heading, which attracts the most attention. Check if the words correspond well with your visual content and if all headings work together as a system.
Stick to your chosen tone of voice
The vocabulary and style you choose depend on your audience, which is true on many levels. While editing, look for inconsistencies in the stylistic register and word choice. Remember, even the need to be extra formal doesn’t mean you have to be boring as well.
Content exists to serve your business.
First of all, content should serve your audience.
Tone of voice plays a crucial part in telling a story and can have a big influence on the way in which content is received by the reader, so spending time developing this at the start of the project is extremely valuable.—Ric Bell, Creative Director, and Christina Twigg, Designer at POST Studio

Super ergonomic and concise tone of voice
A good quality pitch deck should have a format that’s easy to use, that helps everyone create elements of communication that are coherent with the brand’s visual identity.—Helena Álvarez Fernández, Graphic Designer at Fever
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Gather data to support your offer or idea
When the message is sharp and you have a killer starting point, it may be time to contextualize. In that case, it’s better to talk numbers and use examples your reader can relate to. Stick to the following types of content:
Examples, facts and numbers
Benchmarking
Examples, facts and numbers
When talking about abstract concepts, it’s better to nail them down with specific facts or down-to-earth analogies, which are more accessible and thus easier to remember. On the other hand, when presenting numbers or particular solutions, it is better to generalize to help see the bigger picture.
When creating a sales presentation, you need to show how the product transforms your target audience's needs. So, examples should work as a problem-solution duo. When working on a report, be specific: instead of ‘our team did well’ try ‘we did X% of our planned revenue’. Same with pitch decks: not ‘the best start-up in the world’, but ‘the demand for X has grown over the past 5 years from A to B — and according to the estimates of both, it will continue to grow’.
8 tips
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on presentation design you’ve already looked through
Keep going—there’s more to come
Presentations that break down deliverables don’t show real value. Clients and recipients need assurance on outcomes, i.e, growth, customer loyalty, etc. and not deliverables, i.e., a website, a logo, etc. Such things can go into documentation like a statement of work, but it’s important to re-articulate what deliverables mean in terms of outcomes. The more successful you are at that, the better performing your presentations will be.—Abb-d Taiyo, Co-founder, Design&Production Director at Driftime
Benchmarking
You can use benchmarking as a structural solution for the whole presentation, especially when discussing business propositions. Nota bene: highlight your own ideas, thoughts and statements to distinguish them from the projects developed by others.
Benchmarking requires a more complex design solution. These can be used as templates.
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Two pitch decks: one to send and one to show
When you are giving a talk and your slides support your idea, limit text in the presentation to a minimum: only headings and keywords are necessary most of the time. However, when the presentation goes solo, it is important to add a simple comment to visual material, so the reader will know how to approach the images. Other things you need to check, before hitting the ‘Send’ button:
Links and copyright
Video and animation
Updates
Links and copyright
The presentation you send is more like a publishing project than a set of slides. It’s important to use open-source content when possible and check your country’s copyright law. To increase the time the reader spends on your pitch deck, make links to your projects and social network profiles clickable and use UTM.
Video and animation
Presentations with the talk following are supposed to be shown within a limited timeframe, which is why video footage is not always an option. However, you do not have to put up with the time limitation when sending. Check that the file plays inside the presentation, not in the new browser’s window.
Updates
It’s more convenient to publish your project on a platform you can instantly update, even if it’s already been set. Sometimes, you may only need to correct a misspelling; sometimes, the data you use requires constant updates.
We traditionally would write up a long-form report, review and then finesse it before adding it to a deck for clients that prefer to read (or won't be in the room when we present). We'll then create a shorter, presentable version so we can debrief in the room with our immediate clients. These will be more visual and more compelling to absorb.
We do both because we've learned how hard it is to create a presentation that can act as a long-form deck that you can read, and a presentable deck that's still interesting to absorb.—Tarik Fontenelle, Director, ON ROAD
Presentations created in Readymag work perfectly when shown and when sent. Only one link (with a perfect domain name) goes both ways and you can make any tweaks instantly.
Book a free demo to learn more about how Readymag can fit your business.