How to Build a Better Deck

A conversation on design with Zenzile Sky Lark and Jerry Cheung, Design Associates at Techstars

A very poorly designed slide (certainly not done by Zenzile or Jerry)

For many founders, design is not their strong-suit. Sure, give them an intractable market problem, fierce competition and limited resources — no sweat. Ask them to make something look nice on a slide? Well, that’s when it seems to fall apart.

To learn how to implement more thoughtful design, as well as how to best engage professional designers, I sat down with Zenzile Sky Lark and Jerry Cheung, the in-house design team at Techstars.

Here are some of my key takeaways from that conversation.

• Think in Grids. Ok, all the consultants and investment bankers in the room definitely already know this, but for everyone else, “thinking in grids” goes a long way towards cleaning up a messy slide. What does this mean? It means making sure all the pieces of your content are aligned along a shared axis and appropriately compartmentalized on the page. Use tools like “Align” and “Distribute” in the toolbar to do this cleanly — don’t try to eyeball it; you’re going to mess it up.

The “Align” button is a powerful friend.

• Strong color counts. Having a strong color helps center the brand around a feeling or theme. Look at what your competitors are doing in the market to get a sense of the landscape. What has been resonating with customers? How can you distinguish and differentiate yourself through unique choices of voice, typography and accents?
• Design for your customer, not yourself. I thought this was a critical insight into a common mistake founders make in the design process. Yes, that fun, “millennial aesthetic” color palette might seem like a great choice, but if your company doesn’t serve that particular audience, it may ultimately not convey the right message. What counts is what your audience likes and expects, not what you like.

Chuck Green really said it best

• Use Canva. From a tools perspective, Zenzile and Jerry both were proponents of Canva (not sponsored, but Canva, DM me to collab). Why? Well, Google Slides is limited in terms of assets, and with Canva they both felt it was much easier to upload fonts, graphics and implement animations. More importantly, by having instant access to a larger library of assets, it helps spark creative inspiration and provide the designer with new ideas.

An example of Canva’s asset library and instant inspiration

Zenzile and Jerry also offered some overarching thoughts that I think are key for founding teams to embrace when it comes to engaging designers.

• Think of branding from Day 1. Too many founders consider branding in the last minute, when in reality it is so important to have the key pillar’s of one’s brand clearly defined from the onset of the company. If you want people to be interested in your product, you need to convey your message in a form with which your audience can identify. It helps to have a visual language to convey your company’s values to users. Plus, having a strong view on brand will immediately pay dividends when building pitch decks, as it will quickly prevent your slides from being blank and drab (or, worse yet, crowded and overwhelming).
• Be available to the designer. I thought this was another great insight from the design team. Too often, founders and entrepreneurs delegate the task of building and designing decks to a designer, and then they assume the design team can take it from there on their own. In reality, the designer is going to want to check-in and make sure the design considerations they’re making are aligned with the company’s goal. Ultimately, there is a lot of rationale behind design choices, and getting buy-in from the key company stakeholders (aka the founder) is important to both the designer’s wellbeing and the success of the project.

Zenzile and Jerry both have awesome design portfolios online — go check ’em out!