AfterDesk
EN
Apply

The toolkit

Presentations and slide decks

You will learn to build a presentation from someone else's raw material: finding the argument first, writing headlines that state the point, turning paragraphs into diagrams, choosing charts that do not mislead, and holding forty slides to one consistent system. We cover image licensing, speaker notes, exporting for screen and print, and the pre-send check. Free tools throughout, including Google Slides, Canva free and LibreOffice Impress.

9
lessons
~71
minutes
12
exam questions

Free · No paid tier · No certificate fee

After this course

Everything, and what is in it.

Decide the argument before the deck

~7 min

What a deck is actually for

A deck is not a document. It is a visual aid for a decision or an explanation, and every slide either moves that along or gets cut. Before you open any tool, find three things in the brief: who will see this, what they should do or believe afterwards, and whether it will be presented live or read alone. Those three answers change everything downstream, including how much text belongs on a slide. On AfterDesk you cannot ask the client directly. The brief is your source and your delivery note is your channel back. If the brief is silent, do not build forty slides on a silent guess. Pick the reading the brief most supports, build that, and say which reading you used. A deck built for the wrong audience is not fixable by prettier slides.

Write the one sentence first

Before the first slide, write the single sentence the audience should be able to repeat the next morning. Not the topic, the point. Not quarterly marketing update, but rather we should move half the ad budget to email because email brought more signups at a quarter of the cost. That sentence is the spine. Every section exists to support it, and anything that does not support it is either a different deck or an appendix. Write it at the top of your working document and keep it visible. When the raw material tempts you with an interesting chart that serves nothing, the sentence is what lets you leave it out without feeling like you cut corners.

Build the storyline in text

Write your headlines as plain lines in a document before touching a slide tool. One line per slide, each stating the point of that slide as a full sentence. Then read the list top to bottom and ask whether a stranger would follow the argument from headlines alone. If there is a jump, you are missing a slide. If two lines say nearly the same thing, you have one slide too many. Reordering ten lines in a document takes a minute. Reordering ten finished slides with charts and images takes an hour. This is the cheapest place in the whole job to be wrong, so be wrong here on purpose, several times, until the order holds.

A structure that usually holds

When the brief gives you material but no shape, a reliable default is this. Here is the situation everyone agrees on. Here is the problem or change that breaks it. Here is what we recommend. Here is the evidence. Here is what happens next and who does what. Senior audiences especially expect the recommendation early, not saved for a reveal at slide thirty. If the raw material is a research dump with no recommendation in it, do not invent one. Present the findings in a clear order and say plainly in your delivery note that the source material contained no conclusion. Structure is your job. Deciding the client's position is not.

Remember

  • A deck is a visual aid for a decision, not a document read alone.
  • Write the sentence the audience should repeat tomorrow before opening any tool.
  • Draft headlines in a text document first; reordering finished slides costs an hour.
  • Structure the material, but never invent a recommendation the source does not contain.

Working from someone else's raw material

~8 min

Inventory before you build

Raw material arrives as a mess. A transcript, three spreadsheets, an old deck, a document full of tracked changes. Before you build anything, spend fifteen minutes making an inventory. List every file, what is in it, its date, and whether it looks final or draft. Two spreadsheets with the same name and different numbers is the single most common trap, and finding it at the end costs you a rebuild. While you do this, note which figures appear more than once and whether they agree. If the old deck says revenue grew twelve percent and the spreadsheet says nine, you have found the question you need to settle before slide one, not after slide forty.

Separate fact from assertion

As you read, mark each claim as either something the material proves or something the author asserts. A number in a spreadsheet with a date and a source is provable. A sentence in a transcript saying the market is growing fast is an assertion. Both can appear in the deck, but they have to be dressed differently. Provable things get a chart, a figure and a source line. Assertions get stated as the client's view, not as fact, and never get a fake chart built around them. Inventing a chart to make an opinion look measured is the fastest way to damage a client, and it is exactly the kind of thing quality control catches and sends back.

Assumptions and the delivery note

You will hit questions you cannot ask, because you never speak to the client and the channel you have is the note you send with your delivery. So handle ambiguity by rule. Choose the safer assumption, meaning the one that is easier to correct if it turns out wrong. Make it visible on the slide rather than buried, for example a source line naming the file you used. Then state it plainly in your note. The two spreadsheets disagree on Q3, so I used the one dated March 12. That gives the operator a ten second decision instead of a puzzle. Working directly for your own clients, the same discipline applies, except you send the question first and the note anyway.

Client data stays in the task

Everything in the task stays in the task. Do not upload client files to online converters, free design sites that require an upload, or an AI tool to summarise, unless the brief explicitly says you may. Those services keep copies, and a client's unreleased numbers sitting on a stranger's server is a breach whether or not anyone notices. When the job is delivered and approved, delete your local copies. Do not keep the deck as a portfolio sample, do not screenshot a slide for social media, and do not reuse the client's chart in another client's work. If you want portfolio pieces, build them from public or invented data. That is the only version you own.

Their words, your structure

Use the client's vocabulary, not yours. If their material says partners, do not switch to resellers because it sounds sharper. If a product name is written a particular way, copy it exactly, including capital letters. Your job is to restructure and clarify, not to translate their world into your words. Where their phrasing is genuinely unclear, keep it and flag it rather than guessing at the meaning. Where a sentence is grammatically broken but the meaning is obvious, fix the grammar quietly. That line is simpler than it sounds. Fix how it reads, never change what it says. When you are unsure which side of the line you are on, keep the original and mention it in your note.

Remember

  • Inventory every file and date first; conflicting versions are the usual trap.
  • Mark claims as proven or asserted, and dress them differently on the slide.
  • Where the brief is silent, take the safer assumption and state it in your note.
  • Client files never leave the task; no copies kept, no portfolio use.
  • Fix how a sentence reads, never change what it says.

One idea per slide, stated plainly

~7 min

The headline states the point

Most slide titles name a topic, such as Q3 results. A working headline states the conclusion, such as Q3 grew nine percent and all of it came from existing customers. Topic titles make the audience hunt for the point. Conclusion headlines hand it to them. This one change does more for a deck than any design work. Keep headlines to one line where you can and two at most, written as ordinary sentences rather than clipped fragments. Do not use capitals or punctuation tricks to add emphasis. If you cannot write the conclusion of a slide as a sentence, you do not yet know what the slide is for, and building the chart first will not tell you.

Everything else proves the headline

Once the headline states the point, everything else on the slide has one job, which is making that point believable at a glance. A chart, a small table, a diagram, two or three supporting lines. If an element does not support the headline, it belongs on another slide or nowhere. This is also the fastest way to repair a slide someone else built. Read the headline, then delete whatever does not serve it. Watch for the logo, the date, the page number and the decorative shape that together eat a third of the space and prove nothing. Space is the resource you are spending, and every element competes for the two seconds the audience gives the slide.

Turning paragraphs into slide-sized pieces

Raw material comes in paragraphs. Slides cannot hold paragraphs. Take the paragraph, find the claim, put the claim in the headline, and keep only the two or three specifics that make it land. A number, a date, a name. The rest goes into the speaker notes, where the presenter can say it out loud, or into an appendix slide after the end for people who want the detail. Nothing is lost. It is moved to where it works. A useful test is timing. If a line on a slide takes more than about eight seconds to read, the audience will read instead of listening, and you have just muted the presenter.

When a slide holds two ideas

If you cannot write one headline that covers everything on the slide, you have two slides. Split it. Two clear slides always beat one crowded slide, and nobody in the room is counting. The exception is a hard page limit in the brief. If you hit one, tell the operator which content you compressed rather than shrinking the font to eight points to make it fit. Body text below roughly eighteen points on a presented slide is a sign that you are hiding a structural problem behind typography. Documents meant to be read can carry smaller text, but then you are building a document, and it should be built as one from the start.

Remember

  • Headlines state the conclusion, not the topic; that single change transforms a deck.
  • Everything on the slide must prove the headline; anything else moves or goes.
  • Detail belongs in speaker notes or an appendix, not shrunk to eight points.
  • Two clear slides beat one crowded slide; nobody counts the slides.

Turning a paragraph into a diagram

~8 min

Four shapes cover most paragraphs

Most business paragraphs are one of four shapes underneath. A sequence, where steps happen in order, which you draw as boxes and arrows. A comparison, where two or three options sit side by side against the same criteria, where a small table usually beats a picture. A structure, where parts make up a whole, shown by nesting or a stacked bar. A change over time, carried by a timeline or a line chart. Read the paragraph and ask which of the four it is. If it is none of them, it is probably an argument rather than a structure, and it belongs in words. Choosing the wrong shape is worse than plain text, because a diagram makes a promise about how the idea is organised.

Building it with plain shapes

You do not need special software. In Google Slides, use Insert then Shape for boxes, hold Shift while dragging to keep proportions, and use Arrange then Align and Distribute so boxes line up exactly rather than approximately. Group a finished diagram so it moves as one object. LibreOffice Impress offers the same tools under its Format and Shape menus. Canva free gives you ready diagram layouts, which is fine, but change the colours to the client's and delete the decorative extras that came with the template. Avoid built in three dimensional and glossy effects entirely. They add nothing, they date the deck instantly, and they often break when the file is opened in different software.

Labels do the work

An unlabelled diagram is decoration. Every box gets a noun, every arrow gets a verb or a condition, and anything representing a quantity gets a number and a unit. If an arrow means approved by finance, write approved by finance on it rather than using a colour the audience must decode from a legend. Keep the vocabulary identical to the rest of the deck. If the previous slide said onboarding, the box says onboarding, not activation. Then run the honest test. Cover the headline and show the diagram to someone who has not read the material. If they cannot tell you what it says, the diagram is not finished, however neat it looks.

When a diagram is wrong

Not every paragraph should become a picture. Three loosely linked ideas become three floating boxes and an arrow that means nothing, which is worse than one clear sentence. If the content is a list of items with attributes, use a small table rather than shapes. If it is one number that matters, put the number on the slide large and the context underneath. If it is a story or a judgement, write it as a short sentence and let the presenter speak. Diagrams earn their space when the relationship between the parts is the point. When the parts themselves are the point, plainer formats win.

Remember

  • Most paragraphs are a sequence, a comparison, a structure, or a change over time.
  • Align and distribute, then group; approximate alignment is visible to everyone.
  • Label every box and arrow; an unlabelled diagram is decoration.
  • If the parts matter more than the relationships, use a table or a sentence.

Charts that tell the truth

~9 min

Let the question pick the chart

Let the question choose the chart. Comparing amounts across categories is a bar chart, horizontal when the labels are long. Showing movement over time is a line chart. Showing parts of a whole can be a pie, but only with three or four slices, since beyond that a stacked bar or a sorted bar is far easier to read. A relationship between two measures is a scatter. That covers nearly everything a business deck needs. Avoid doughnuts, radars, three dimensional anything, and dual axis charts with two different scales, which are the easiest way in the world to make two unrelated lines look connected. If you are choosing a chart because it looks interesting, you have stopped answering the question.

Axes and baselines

Bar charts must start at zero. The length of a bar is the message, so cutting the axis at ninety makes a two percent difference look like a doubling, and that is a lie whether or not you meant it. Line charts may start above zero, because the message is the slope rather than the length, but label the axis clearly so nobody misreads the scale. Keep intervals even and do not skip a year because data is missing. If percentages should add to one hundred and they add to ninety seven, find out why before publishing, and if it is rounding, say so in a footnote. These are not stylistic preferences. A misleading chart is the client's reputation, signed with your work.

Say what the numbers are

Every chart needs four things. What is measured, the unit, the period covered, and where the number came from. Missing units are among the most common defects sent back in revision. Write the source in small text at the bottom of the slide, using the client's own wording, for example internal sales report, January to June. If a percentage comes from a small sample, put the count beside it, because forty percent of five people is a very different statement from forty percent of five thousand. If the raw material does not tell you where a number came from, do not invent a plausible source. Leave a visible placeholder and raise it in your delivery note.

Strip the chart down

Default chart settings are built for spreadsheets, not for a room. Delete the heavy gridlines, drop the chart border, and remove the legend by labelling lines or bars directly where they sit. Use one strong colour for the series that matters and grey for the rest, so the eye lands where the headline points. Sort bars by value unless the categories have a natural order such as months. Round numbers to what the decision needs, so nine point three percent, not nine point two eight four. This is not decoration. Every element you remove makes the remaining ones easier to read, and the audience has only a few seconds to spend.

When data contradicts the summary

Sometimes you build the chart and it does not show what the client's summary says. Do not narrow the date range until it does. Do not switch to an index that hides the drop. Do not quietly change the chart type until the shape looks better. Build it straight, then say what you found in your delivery note. The summary says growth accelerated, the monthly data shows it flattened after April. That note is one of the most valuable things you will ever send. Being wrong in public costs the client far more than a revision costs anyone. Flagging beats guessing every time, and it separates someone who assembles slides from someone a client relies on.

Remember

  • The question picks the chart, not the other way round.
  • Bars start at zero; a cut axis turns a small gap into a lie.
  • Label the measure, unit, period and source on every chart, every time.
  • If the data contradicts the summary, flag it instead of reshaping the chart.

Making forty slides look like one

~9 min

Set the master before slide two

Consistency is not taste, it is a system, and the system lives in the master or theme. In Google Slides, open View then Theme Builder to set fonts, sizes, colours and the position of the title box once, and every slide inherits it. LibreOffice Impress calls it View then Master Slide. In Canva free, the template you choose plays the same role. Set this up before you build content, because retrofitting a master onto forty finished slides means touching all forty. If the client sent an existing template, use theirs and do not improve it. Matching their other decks is usually worth more to them than your better spacing, and departing from the template is the sort of thing that gets a deck sent back.

Two fonts and fixed sizes

Two fonts is plenty and one is fine. Pick your sizes and stay on them. One size for headlines, one for body, one for the small source line, and nothing invented in between. When everything is bold, nothing is emphasised, so use bold for the one number that matters and leave the rest alone. Avoid capitals for anything longer than a couple of words, because capitals are slower to read. Use fonts that exist everywhere, such as Arial, Calibri, Georgia or the standard Google Fonts, so the file does not reflow on another machine. An unusual font that lives only on your laptop is silently replaced on theirs, and the layout you spent an hour on breaks.

Alignment and the invisible grid

The difference between amateur and professional slides is usually alignment, not creativity. Every element should sit on a small number of invisible lines. The same left margin on every slide, the same top position for every title, the same gap between items. Use the align and distribute tools rather than your eye, and turn on guides. Keep generous empty margins, since a slide crowded to the edges reads as anxious and prints badly. When something feels wrong on a slide and you cannot name why, it is usually that two elements are nearly aligned rather than aligned. A near miss is more visible than an obvious difference. Fix it by snapping to the grid, not by nudging.

Give every colour a job

Give every colour a job and write the jobs down. One colour for emphasis, one neutral grey for everything secondary, and the client's brand colours wherever you have them. Three or four colours in total is usually right. Do not add colour because a slide looks empty. Check contrast, because light grey text on white disappears on a projector and a decorative gradient behind text becomes unreadable in a bright room. Roughly eight percent of men have some form of colour vision deficiency, so never use red and green alone to mean opposite things. Add a label, a shape or a difference in position so the meaning survives without colour, including in black and white print.

Repairing an inherited deck

You will often be handed a deck built by five people over two years. Do not redesign it unless you were asked to. Run a repair pass instead. Apply the master so titles land in the same place, unify the fonts and sizes, align the content boxes, and standardise colours to the client's palette. Then list what you changed in your delivery note. Keep the odd choices that are clearly deliberate, such as a strange but consistent title colour, and fix the ones that are clearly accidents, such as three sizes of the same heading. Repair work is quiet, it is never complimented, and it is noticed immediately when it is missing.

Remember

  • Set the master or theme before building content, never after forty slides.
  • Two fonts, fixed sizes, and only fonts that exist on every machine.
  • Align with the tools, not your eye; nearly aligned is worse than different.
  • Never let colour alone carry meaning; it dies in print and for many readers.
  • Repair an inherited deck rather than redesigning it unasked.

Images, icons and licences

~8 min

Why you cannot grab from search

An image found through a search engine is not free to use. Search shows you where pictures live, not what you are allowed to do with them, and most of what it shows belongs to someone, often an agency that employs people to find unlicensed use. Invoices for one unlicensed photograph are real, and they land on the client, who then asks who put it there. The rule is simple. If you cannot name the licence and where you got it, it does not go in the deck. This is not caution for its own sake. It is the difference between a supplier who creates risk and one who removes it.

Where free images come from

Free libraries such as Unsplash, Pexels and Pixabay offer photographs usable in commercial work, and Openverse and Wikimedia Commons collect openly licensed material, though Wikimedia in particular mixes several licences with different conditions. For icons, Google Material Symbols and the free tiers of the common icon sets cover most needs. Do not trust a summary, including this one. Open the licence page on the day you download, read what it allows and what it requires, and follow it. Terms change. Some licences require credit, some forbid using a person's face in a way that suggests endorsement, and some forbid resale inside a template. Reading a licence takes two minutes and is part of the job.

Keep a source record

Keep a plain record for every asset you place. File name, where it came from, the licence, and the date you downloaded it. Three columns in a text file is enough. Deliver it alongside the deck, or summarise it in your delivery note. Six months later, when someone asks whether the photograph on slide four is cleared, that record is the answer and it takes seconds to produce. Without it, the safest response is to remove the image and rebuild the slide. The habit costs you a minute per image and makes you the person clients keep, because most people do not do it and everyone eventually needs it.

Screenshots, logos and faces

Screenshots from the client's own systems are usually fine, but check them closely before they go in. Real customer names, email addresses, account numbers and internal comments hide in the corners of screenshots. Crop them out, and where the underlying text must be unreadable use a solid shape rather than a blur, because some blurs can be reversed. Competitor logos in a factual comparison are normally acceptable, but never redrawn or altered. Be careful with stock photographs of people. A smiling model beside the words our customers implies something untrue. If the client has photographs of their real team or their real site, those are better than anything in a stock library.

Images that earn their place

An image earns its place by carrying meaning, not by filling space. One strong photograph across a whole slide, with the headline over a darkened area, beats four small pictures scattered around text. Crop to the part that matters instead of shrinking the whole frame. Never stretch an image out of proportion, and hold Shift while resizing to keep it true. Check resolution at full size, because a picture that looks acceptable in a small box turns to mush on a projector. When the deck is finished, compress the images if the file is heavy, since a deck that will not open in an email is a deck nobody read.

Remember

  • Search shows you where images live, not what you may do with them.
  • Read the licence page yourself on the day you download; terms change.
  • Record file, source, licence and date for every asset you place.
  • Screenshots hide real names and account numbers; cover them with solid shapes.

Speaker notes and the reading version

~7 min

Notes are for the presenter

Speaker notes sit under the slide and are visible only to the person presenting. They exist so the slide can stay clean while the presenter still has what they need to say. Write them for someone standing in front of a room, slightly nervous, who needs to find their place fast, not for a reader with time to spare. Short lines, the specific figures, the name of the source if someone asks, and the sentence that leads into the next slide. Google Slides, LibreOffice Impress and Canva all provide a notes area under the canvas. Do not keep notes in a separate document, because the two will drift apart the moment there is a revision.

What goes in the notes

Put four things in the notes. The point of the slide in one sentence, so the presenter can open with it. The two or three facts behind the number, for whoever asks where it came from. Anything sensitive about how far the presenter should go, for example that a figure is unaudited or a date is not yet confirmed. And a short transition into the next slide, which is what most presenters actually struggle with. Keep it to what fits on half a screen, since nobody reads a paragraph while presenting. If you are writing for a presenter you have never met, write plainly and avoid jokes and idioms, because delivering someone else's joke is uncomfortable.

Decks that travel without a presenter

A deck that will be emailed and read alone is a different product from a deck presented live. Nobody is there to explain it, so the slide has to carry more. Fuller headlines, a short paragraph under the chart, direct labels instead of a legend the presenter would have talked through. Speaker notes disappear for most readers, so anything essential must move onto the slide itself. Find out which version you are building before you start, because converting one into the other is close to a rebuild. If the brief does not say, build the presented version and add one short summary line per slide, which survives both uses reasonably well.

Handouts and appendices

When detail does not fit but the client needs it available, use an appendix after a clearly marked end slide. Number appendix slides separately and reference them from the main deck, for example see appendix two for the full regional breakdown. This keeps the argument tight while proving you did not lose the detail. Some clients want a handout carrying more text than the presented slides. If so, that is a second export rather than a change to the deck, and you should say which is which in your delivery note. Never assume one deck can double as a report. When the brief asks for both, they are two files.

Remember

  • Speaker notes keep the slide clean and give the presenter what to say.
  • Write notes as short lines with figures, sources and a transition.
  • A read-alone deck must carry on the slide what a presenter would say.
  • Detail goes in a marked appendix, referenced from the main deck.

Exporting and the pre-send check

~8 min

Choose the format for the medium

PDF is the safe default for anything being sent out, because it fixes fonts and layout on every machine. Send the editable file when the brief asks for it, or when the client will keep working on the deck, and match the requested format exactly. If the request names an editable presentation format, export it from Google Slides or Impress and then open the exported file yourself to see what moved, because conversion between tools shifts text boxes and can drop effects. Slide size matters too. Widescreen sixteen by nine for screens, and a page shaped setup only if the file is genuinely going to be printed as a document. Set that at the start, never at the end.

What breaks in export

The two things that break most often are fonts and links. If you used a font the recipient does not have, their machine substitutes another and every text box reflows, which is why common fonts matter. Embedded video and animation frequently do not survive export, so never let a key point depend on one. Check that any hyperlink you added still goes where it should after export. Open the exported file on a different device if you can, or at least in a different application, and look at it once at full screen. Exporting is not the end of the job. Reviewing what you exported is the end of the job.

Printing and black and white

If the deck may be printed, check it in black and white before sending. Colour coded charts collapse into identical greys, pale text vanishes, and a dark full bleed background consumes a great deal of ink and often prints as a muddy block. Test by exporting to PDF and previewing in grayscale. Make sure no meaning depends on colour alone, which is the same rule that keeps the deck readable for people with colour vision deficiency. Check margins as well, since elements pushed to the very edge of a slide are frequently cut off by printers. When in doubt, keep an empty band around the edge of every slide.

The pre-send pass

Before you deliver, do one slow pass with the deck at full screen rather than in the editing view. Check that every headline states a point and that no headline is duplicated. Check every number against the source material once more, especially any you typed by hand. Run a spellcheck, then read the deck aloud, which catches the errors a spellcheck approves. Confirm every chart has units, a period and a source. Look for the placeholder text you left on slide six. Confirm the slide numbers run correctly and the file name is clear and dated. Then leave it for ten minutes, come back, and look once more before you upload.

The delivery note

Your note to the operator is part of the deliverable. Say what you built, what you assumed, and what you would check with the client if you could. For example, forty two slides plus five appendix slides, exported as PDF and as an editable file, used the March 12 spreadsheet where the two sources disagreed, slide nineteen has no source in the raw material and is marked, images are from Pexels with the licence list attached. That note is what lets quality control approve you quickly, and it turns a revision into a two minute fix. Do not use it to apologise. Use it to be precise.

Remember

  • PDF unless the brief asks otherwise, and always open what you exported.
  • Uncommon fonts reflow on other machines and break the layout you built.
  • Check the deck in grayscale before it can reach a printer.
  • Deliver a note stating what you built, what you assumed, and what you flagged.

Sit the exam

The courses are free. The work is real.

Twelve scenario questions. Pass at ten. Three attempts a day. The bar is the point.

No paid tier. No certificate fee. No upsell. Not now, not later.

Create a free account

You can start the first course tonight.

The curriculum

Everything, and what is in it.