The Better Deck Deck: Conversation with Nolan Haims

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  Nolan Haims has over 20 years of experience in the fields of visual communications and presentation, having created every type of presentation from Fortune 500 CEO keynotes, to TED talks to multi-million dollar agency pitches. He trains organizations to think visually, speaks at national conferences, writes on visual storytelling at PresentYourStory, and is a co-host of the long-running Presentation Podcast. And as one of only 34 Microsoft PowerPoint MVPs in the world, he works with and advises the software development team. He runs his own visual communications consultancy in Montclair, NJ.

In this conversation, Nolan talks about his new product, The Better Deck Deck, which is a deck that shows options for creating no-bullet slides.

Geetesh: Nolan, The Better Deck Deck is a unique product, and that means there’s a story behind how this was conceptualized and created. Can you share the story with us?

Nolan: As someone who has designed thousands of presentations over the years, the most frequent thing I am called upon to do is to take a slide of bullet points and create something that “doesn’t look like PowerPoint.” There are so many ways to design slides without bullet points, but when you have to retain the text from those bullets, it usually comes down to a technique called “chunking,” in which each bullet is first chunked out into its own text box on the slide. This basic technique is something that I teach in all of my trainings and webinars. It is a fundamental concept of professional slide design, and it serves as the basis for each of the 52 techniques in The Better Deck Deck and the over 150 included real-world slide examples that make use of the techniques.

I have decades of experience as a presentation designer, but I still often have to go back to past work for ideas when I find myself staring at a list of bullet points. I wanted to give this type of creative inspiration to others who do not have my library of past work to pull from, and that desire eventually coalesced into The Better Deck Deck.

It’s not a book that you have to read or a system you have to follow. It’s simply a tangible stack of ideas you can pull from to apply a professional design to a slide. Pick a card at random, or flip through them all to see what might work for you. You can take any idea you like and start immediately making your slides better.

When I train clients, it’s all about actionable and easy-to-implement ideas, tricks, and techniques for creating better visual communications. And that is exactly what The Better Deck Deck aims to be for designers and non-designers alike!

Geetesh: Have you heard from users of The Better Deck Deck? Have they used ideas from the deck for their presentations? Is this change contributing to better slides?

Nolan: We have heard from many people already that they are keeping the deck on their desk right next to their computers, flipping through it often, and using and adapting the ideas in their work. One person even sent me three different new versions of one of their boring bullet point slides using three different techniques from the deck. And the most amazing part was that it took this person only ten minutes to make the slides. The hardest thing in designing without bullet points is simply getting an idea of what’s possible and seeing design options. With The Better Deck Deck, anyone can start immediately copying and adapting the designs for their own purposes without needing a degree in graphic design.

While The Better Deck Deck hasn’t quite rid the world of bullet points yet, my hope is that its users will start to learn that it is just as easy to design slides without bullet points as it is with them—as long as you have a little bit of creative inspiration.

The views and opinions expressed in this blog post or content are those of the authors or the interviewees and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company.