Introduction.
”As you can imagine, given the limited time frame we had, we had to prioritize the content over the look and feel”. Your colleague
This sentence sounds familiar? Keep reading.
Every day, professionals create millions of slides. In most organizations, communication revolves around presentations, which are collections of slides created with tools like PowerPoint, Google Slides, or Keynote.
Layout, design, or look and feel, refers to the visible design aspects (fonts, colors, spacing). It is often reduced to slides’ aesthetics. Yet, good-looking slides are only one part of a well-thought layout. The primary goal of an effective layout is to maximize the impact of your insights.
Slide writing is the process of efficiently turning a narrative into a visual compelling presentation of slides. It encompasses everything from workflows and presentation structuring to design choices that guide your audience’s attention.
In this article, we will explore the value of slide writing skills and the reasons they are often overlooked.
Slide writing skills are essential to master to build powerful business presentation.
Impactful business presentations share three characteristics, including well-designed slides.
Strategy consulting firms, such as McKinsey, BCG, and Bain, have mastered the art of impactful slide presentations. What separates their presentations from most others’ is that these firms have understood that strong insights alone are useless if poorly communicated.
A compelling presentation combines two other elements: a great storyline and well-designed visual slides. This article focuses mainly on the latter. If you want to learn how to build compelling storylines for your presentations, follow the guidelines highlighted in the storylining complete guide.
Well-thought slide design will help you persuade your audience.
In 1986 already, a study conducted by the University of Minnesota and 3M observed that presentations containing visuals were 43% more persuasive than presentations without visuals. High-quality slides will increase your persuasion skills, they will increase your audience’s focus, understanding, agreement, and retention.
Simplify understanding and boost retention.
The best slides don’t just present information—they guide your audience through the narrative. A clear structure helps signal transitions, making it easy for your audience to follow the story.
Thoughtful design ensure your audience stays engaged without feeling overwhelmed, allowing them to focus on the core messages.
Well-designed slides break down complex ideas into digestible visuals—charts, diagrams, and infographics—making your message easier to grasp. People remember visual information far better than text alone, ensuring your key points stick long after the presentation ends.
Build credibility and professionalism.
The same way your appearance can influence a job interview, the quality of your slides shapes how your audience perceives your work. Polished, professional slide designs convey attention to detail and expertise. Consistently delivering high-quality presentations will position you as a reliable, detail-oriented professional in the eyes of colleagues and management.
For external stakeholders, aligning your slides with your company’s brand identity allows you to leverage your organization’s reputation. For example, McKinsey’ slides are easily recognizable as they all have the same blue, the same is true for BCG with their signature green presentations, reinforcing brand consistency. If you’re an independent professional, consistent use of logos, colors, and fonts in your presentations helps establish and reinforce your personal brand, making your work instantly recognizable.
Learning how consultants design slides will help you improve your workflow.
Many professionals view slide design as a time-consuming chore. They focus on the content first and then think about layout if they have time. But this mindset is counterproductive. Learning the tricks of structured slide writing does require an initial investment, but it then pays off by saving you a lot of time on your entire workflow.
Once mastered, the process becomes second nature and you will be far more efficient than you used to. After internalizing principles like one message per slide or titles should be aligned, decision-making becomes automatic. What once took 20 minutes now takes 5, slide writing best practices will enable you to focus on what’s valuable, lower formatting needs as well as rework needs.
Consulting slide writing methodology will help you focus on what’s valuable.
When following slide writing best practices, no more building 20 slides only to scrap half of them later because they don’t align with the story. With a story driven process, you will work on what is valuable from the beginning.
By applying slide design best practices, you will lower formatting needs.
If you use the slide master, even at a basic level, your logos, footers, headers, etc. will all be consistent. And if you want to apply the saved format to a slide, a single click applies them.
By following the slide writing tips consultants apply, you will lower your rework needs.
Stakeholders receive logically structured, polished work. You work will simply get better. Chaotic, time-consuming fixes are minimized, like realigning titles across 50 slides or reformatting bullet points.
However, slides are rarely well-designed, because the slide writing methodology is not properly taught.
In most business presentations, layout is either overlooked or poorly chosen
Impactful presentations combine three key elements: pertinent insights, a compelling storyline, and well-designed slides. However, if we were to examine a typical business presentation, we’d likely find:
- Insights that are highly relevant and valuable,
- A flow of information that feels disjointed and hard to follow,
- Ineffective design, undermining professionalism and clarity.
There are two different types of ineffective designs: no layout, and bad layouts. Presentations are often a mix of both.
Most professionals don’t consider layout critical.
Most professionals prioritize accuracy in content, treating slide design as aesthetics only, a superficial afterthought rather than a fundamental component of impactful presentations. In this case, the presentation consists of putting together insightful content on a set of slides, with no real consideration of layout.
Others do it wrong.
Even those who recognize the value of layout don’t necessarily know how to proceed. They can end up losing time and adding confusion to their presentations (hello banners across the slide, dozens of colors, old school animations or strong shadows) when working on ineffective layout choices.
Unlike consulting firms, most companies don’t teach any slide writing methodology.
The reality is, most professionals have never received formal training in neither slide writing, nor storylining, two of the three essential skills required to build impactful business presentations.
Even in organizations that offer extensive e-learning libraries, slide writing rarely features in training programs. While employees might have access to courses on how to use PowerPoint, few are taught how to craft impactful slides.
Without proper guidance, it’s no surprise professionals overlook the importance of layout or just don’t know how to do it.
Conclusion.
Crafting effective slides goes well beyond aesthetics, it’s an essential aspect of impactful presentations. Nevertheless, most professionals never receive appropriate training on the matter, hence don’t know the appropriate methodology.
The good news is that you can learn it by yourself. We have created a four-step method, based on top strategy consulting firms’ best practices. Follow the guidelines in the complete slide writing guide, and you’ll significantly enhance your ability to persuade and engage your audience.
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