To What Extent Do You Sweat Over Powerpoint Designing Yourself?
Just curious because I moved banks recently and my new seat tends to do 100% of PPT design through the actual deal team.
In a prior life, we would typically dump the data, charts, tables, content, etc. into the slides as we wanted them ordered but we'd only do very rough formatting jobs to give the graphic designer a jump off point as to what we're going for and which data needs to pop the most. At least on the early drafts that's what we'd do to get design on point and then as needed the deal team would also adjust if we needed a late night nitpicky comment turned or need to add a slide or two on a tight timeline.
So anyways, wanted to talk to my bosses about this because I think it saved us a ton of time using a graphic designer at my old job and freed up more time for us to really think more about fleshing out content instead of spending large chunks of time discussing & executing formatting. Also, the graphic designers do a really good job if you work with those that specifically specialize in finance/consulting deliverables.
Before I bring this up to my superiors though, I wanted to get an idea of how common or not this is to determine whether or not it's worth broaching the topic with boss man. Anyone who would be willing to share their experience as well as what kind of bank they work at (BB, EB, MM, Boutique, etc.), I'd appreciate it!
For context, I moved from a well-established boutique (Union Square Advisors, Broadhaven, etc.) where we used to use graphic design heavily to a MM (Houlihan, HW, etc.) where we do all formatting in house.
Thanks in Advance,
Dougy Boy
I would be very careful in broaching this topic. If you bring outsourcing design when that’s not the norm, you bring attention to a potential deficit to your skillset without any guarantee of meaningful support via the design team if your MD does not agree with your approach to content creation. It could also sow the impression of laziness.
The way to de-risk this outcome is to learn how to create slides end-to-end first and demonstrate competency in order to gain trust. Secondly, see how the design team is actually utilized. After you’ve gained trust with leadership and have adequate knowledge, you can then more effectively and in a risk-free way bring the topic of outsourcing design work.
If you know what good slides look like, you are halfway there to actually creating them yourself. If your firm doesn’t have a master slide show for deck building, create one yourself based on old pitches, teasers, and CIMs that you can use as a building block for new materials. Use of a master deck should eliminate a vast majority of design work vs. creating materials from scratch. You might actually find that you will hardly ever need the design team.
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