Hello Reader 👋

Have you ever seen slides that are so filled that you don't know where to look at?

Of course, you have!

I have and honestly, this is one of my pet peeves so I want to share with you a step by step to go from bad to good slides.

So take a coffee, sit down, and read FP&A Stories like 30K others

This week in FP&A Stories

📊 From bad to great slides (Step by Step)

Ever been overwhelmed by a slide crammed with information?

You're not alone.

The number one mistake in slide presentations is information overflow.

But there's a simple remedy: white space, alignment, and thinking about your message

Here is the typical bad slide

What's wrong with that?

Let's go one by one

1. The title doesn't share any information on what to expect for the slide. We don't know if it's bad, we don't know if it's good. This generic title already makes people yawn before entering the subject;
2. The alignment of the titles (too many titles by the way) makes me cringe. If you really want to put as many titles (don't), use PowerPoint feature to align vertically and distribute horizontally;
3. Chart titles are simply redundants: we know it's 04/2024 and we already have the section of the P&L;
4. There are just too many charts and those are too crowded. They must come from a dashboard, without further tailoring to match the message of the slide;
5. The text is fine....if you wish to write a novel. But if your goal is to make sure people have information and listen to you, it's just too much. No one can read (why would they have to anyway?) and listen to you at the same time;
6. White space: if you look at the following slide, you see that there is a lack of white space (pink area)

Incorporating white space into your slides has several benefits:

• Scanning: It allows the audience to scan through the slide quickly.
• Focus: It improves focus and attention.
• Hierarchy: It helps build a visual hierarchy and create groups.

How do you fix that?

Here's my corrected version of the slide

1. The title has become a headline: more descriptive, more attractive, it's made to deliver enough information for people to be interested but not enough so they still want to listen to you;
2. Only one graph in the slide since we focused on the EBITDA. Indeed, our message was both the revenues (promo campaign) and the OPEX (cost control). Both explain why our EBITDA is higher than Budget and Last Year;
3. We adapted our graph visually
   • We increased the focus on the month analysed and decreased on the other months
   • We added labels on the month of April with the value and the series name (to avoid the legend and have it close to the data)
   • We added a callout to include an explanation
   • No more chart title since the callout explains it's about EBITDA
4. We have 3 points in short text with business insights rather than stating the obvious (our revenues increased vs budget because....)

And with all these changes, you have a much lighter slide with enough business insights so the decision-makers can do their job.

All this thanks to you 😉

That's a wrap for this week

See you next week!

PS: Whenever you're ready to develop your financial storytelling skills and become the visible face of finance, join the Financial Storytelling Program​