How do I get better at slide design?
7 months on the job and I still can't design nice looking pages by myself.
My modeling is rock solid and when I do get input for how they want the slide I do great. But I can't do it by myself.
Help.
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(1) Read everything at your disposal. But high quality material that will have gone through rounds of comments and scrutiny (e.g.Teasers, CIMs, internal bake-off pitches, etc.) I think there's a quote by Steve Jobs that is something like "Good artists copy, great artists steal"
(2) Before drafting a slide, unless it's written out for you in paint-by-numbers fashion, think about it in a first principles sort of way. For example, in a company profile (basic example), "If I'm the audience, and I'm an intelligent person but who has never heard of this company before, what would I want to know?"
(3) It's possible that your taste sucks, but in general, humans like things that other humans like. So if a color palette or image orders looks nice to you, you can assume it probably will for others (admittedly it doesn't sound from your post that this has been the case). Failing that, if you have nothing to work with like your bank's default colors or the client's own, looking at some wedding color scheme websites. People think long and hard about color matching before their big day!
The absolute best decks out there were most likely done by specialist design teams, either internally or externally sourced teams. Quite a few bankers have a design budget.
- as mentioned above, find the most impressive decks and learn from them. What is the design language? What is the story line? How did they build momentum throughout the presentation?
- maybe start a presentation offline, with pen and paper. sketches, post-it notes, white boards, .. - then start the digital deck.
- some people are just not that good at designing decks. no need to be disappointed about it.
- there are design youtube channels, this can be learned as well.
Thanks for the write up. I'm actually being given (nearly) full handle on models since they've also realized that's where my strength lies but of course I still need to do some pages that's why I'm trying to improve.
Does PE focus on PPT as much as IB does?
Our PE decks were super boring and our management team said a while ago "that we had to step up our game".
Reason for this was that our competitors and partners had much better looking decks. we don't know whether they have a design team (unlikely in PE) or whether it was done externally (again, due to confidentiality clauses we don't normally give stuff out). But some PE firms have their own PR/comms firms working for them.
Not sure if this will help but we have a ppt design team that sits on our floor and I made great friends with one of them.. he now shows me little tips and tricks and emails designs he likes. It’s made a huge difference in beautifying my pages
Damn is that their full time job? Do they have a graphic design background?
Ayo would ya be able to pass any on? 👀
I also totally suck at PPT design because I have no imagination at all. The recommendation I got was to ask around for decks and use them for inspiration. Most MDs / VPs / Associates have preferences. So if you're working a lot with a specific MD / VP / Associate you can always ask them to share a couple of decks they really like and use them.
At GS, we have a design team so unless I'm in a hurry I try to use them. For example, I can just send them a shitty table that is completely unformatted and ask them to come up with 2-3 design ideas in the client format.
I echoe everything said above. In my case I’m very similar, Im great with numbers and hate all the cosmetic bs. But I’ve learnt throughout that it’s also part of crucial skill we need to have, it’s part of story telling.
Super valuable lessons I’ve learnt and still apply:
We also have an in-house graphics team who create ppt for us for big pitches. But it’s gotta be us who decide what message to put on and how we lay that out.
People often blame IB for ppt warriors but this is in fact meaningful work. Converting your ideas and discussions on a A4 size page carries a lot of weight in my opinion. So Even if you are not good at it (great that you are good with modelling) it’s a skill set we should all have, it’s almost a must in my view.
Learn your team’s preferences. So many IB decks are not designed well unfortunately. They suffer from too much info that’s unnecessary plus cluttered which is distracting. If you see this type of design as a common place in your group and it doesn’t feel right, it isn’t but you have to roll with it.
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