5 Tips for Better Slide Decks

You’re in a project meeting, presenting a slide deck you prepared, but by slide four, you’ve already lost half your audience. Sound familiar?

After all your effort in building the slide deck, it can be frustrating to see your audience zone out and miss important information. But the last thing you need is to spend hours fiddling with formatting options. So, here’s some good news: you don’t need dazzling artwork to make major improvements.

Instead, focus on making the information easier to take in. The result is better knowledge retention for your audience and less labour for you. The following are some practical tips to shape up your slide decks, so that your message lands.

Limit the Number of Slides

When seeking funding, tech startups are commonly advised to keep their pitch decks to 10-12 slides. In fact, Feedough analyzed over 20 successful startup pitches and concluded that the 12-slide format is ideal for covering the whole story, from problem to market to financials.¹ 

While you may not be pitching a startup, the advice is sound: a concise deck forces you to prioritize what matters most. If you find your presentation growing past 20 slides, ask yourself if points can be combined or if content can be moved to supporting documents.

Note: This is not necessarily the case for instructional content where detail may be required. However, if the goal is to make a case or update your team, challenge yourself to keep it brief.

Limit the Information per Slide

In your school days, did an instructor ever present a slide that was just paragraphs of dense text? A common mistake with slide decks is when the presenter crams way too much information on a single slide, rendering it useless.

Slide decks are not an appropriate medium for large amounts of text. They’re for key ideas, visuals, and speaking cues. This keeps the audience focused on you, rather than struggling to decipher what’s on your slides. Consider using the Notes function in your presentation to store extra details and talking points, rather than placing them directly on your slides.

Replace Text with Visuals on Slide Decks

When the advice is “limit your slides” and “limit the content on your slides,” it’s clear that making slide decks is an exercise in getting to the point!

To make content reduction more doable, you can employ visuals instead. This could look like:

• Replacing a list of places with a map that has markers

• Showing a timeline with project due dates and milestones, instead of text

• Making a table of data into a graph

• Making a series of steps into a flowchart

• Using visual metaphors, like a ladder to represent career progression or a leaking bucket to represent project inefficiencies

Visuals can make complex information easier to digest without overwhelming your audience with extraneous detail. Data visualizations are especially powerful as they can turn numbers into a story (and you can get Scriptorium’s tips on those here).

Build for Accessibility

There’s a concept in education called Universal Design for Learning, which speaks to making learning easier for everyone. For example, if information is formatted to be easier read for someone who is visually impaired, everyone benefits.

A few simple adjustments make your slides more usable for everyone:

• High contrast text-to-background colours

• Simple, non-decorative fonts

• Larger font size

• Short, descriptive alt text so screen readers can interpret visuals

Considerations like these ensure your deck is helpful for diverse learners, whether they’re sitting in the back of the room or using assistive technology.

Follow a Story Arc

Step back and consider your presentation in the context of a very simple narrative. For example, problem > solution > results, or current state > vision > next steps. When framed as a story, information becomes easier to follow.

For example, let’s say you’re proposing a new equipment maintenance process to your team. The narrative might flow like this:

1. Current challenge: Downtime costs, inefficiency

2. Proposed solution: A new scheduling system

3. Results: Reduced downtime, improved safety

4. Next steps: Implementation timeline

It’s a simple arc, but it keeps your audience oriented and makes your message more persuasive.

Consider Going Pro

You don’t have to be an artist to make a better slide deck; clarity, structure, and a little empathy will have your slide decks working harder for you.

However, if you find yourself fretting over a particularly high-stakes presentation, that’s where Scriptorium comes in. Our team has the instructional and storytelling skills to craft a high-impact presentation that keeps your message front and centre.

#SlideDesks #Infographics #ProjectManagement #BusinessWriting #TechnicalWriting #EditingServices #BusinessCommunications #ProcedureWriting #PolicyWriting #TeamWork 

#TranslationServices #InstructionalDesign

References:

1.      The 12 Slides of the Pitch Deck. (n.d.) Feedough. Retrieved December 11, 2025, from https://www.feedough.com/pitch-deck/pitch-deck-slides-guide/