Here are some common mistakes I see in briefings for presentation design projects. They range from typographical details to big picture issues:
- The presentation never explains what it is you actually do
- The slides say something different than the verbal explanation
- Too many benefits, as a result: no positioning
- Doubt between positioning options shines through in the slides
- Presenter gets lost in side stories
- Amateurish images (“funny” ones)
- Images with copy right issues
- Font, colour, alignment, image resolution, aspect ratio chaos
- Inconsistent graphical style
- Inconsistent analogies
- Cliche analogies
- Good data, but the wrong data charts
- Jargon and buzzwords
- Quotes from airport best seller authors
- Bullet point place holders rather than a story
- Too many words that explain too little
- Too few words that say something generic
- Five slides combined in one
- The presentation spends too much time on the obvious
- The presentation avoids the elephant in the room
- Slides from a strategic Board meeting that talk about some strategic choice and expose weaknesses are ported straight into the pitch deck
- Comments and notes with sensitive information are left in presentations for everyone to read
- Sensitive data that is taken out of the chart can still be accessed when opening the graph
- 99% solution, 1% problem
- About us, us, us, us
- Too long a summary, too short a body, too long a wrap up
- Errors marked by the spell checker are still ignored
- Custom fonts that get rendered as Arial
- Slide title appears 3x: in the title, in a bubble, in a line across the bottom
- Second line of a bullet point paragraph is misaligned
- First line of a regular non-bullet point paragraph pops out as if it were a bullet point
- Inconsistent slide templates throughout the presentation (resulting from a Frankenstein, slam the deck together, effort)
- Some charts are still in Microsoft Graph / Microsoft Office 2003 format
- Data charts are copied straight from Excel, without bothering to round up/down
Art: Giovanni Boldini (1842–1931), The Laundry, 1874