Overview
A research deck has a hard job. It has to compress months of work into twenty minutes, survive a projector with washed-out colors, and remain readable to someone at the back of the room who does not share your subfield. The defaults in PowerPoint and Google Slides push you toward a short topic title and a list of bullet points, which is exactly the layout that makes audiences read instead of listen.
Our design work follows the assertion-evidence approach associated with Michael Alley at Penn State: each slide carries a full-sentence headline stating its point, and the body shows visual evidence for that point, such as a chart, a photograph, a diagram or an equation with annotation. Supporting detail moves into speaker notes or a handout. We combine this with practical conventions from scientific communication: one idea per slide, consistent visual grammar across the deck, and charts redrawn for the room rather than pasted from a paper.
We work in PowerPoint, Google Slides or LaTeX Beamer, keep your institution's template where it is required, and hand back editable files. For assessed student presentations, we give design feedback and coaching on a deck you have built; the content, argument and final slides remain your own work.
Who it’s for and the problems it solves
This is for you if you are…
- Researchers preparing seminar, lab-meeting or departmental talks who want slides that stand up to a critical audience
- Faculty converting lecture notes into teaching decks that students can revisit after class
- Doctoral candidates polishing a progress review, upgrade or confirmation presentation
- Mathematicians, physicists and engineers who write in LaTeX and want Beamer slides that do not look like a default theme
- Students who have drafted an assessed presentation and want feedback on layout, readability and visual clarity
Common problems we help with
- Every slide is a wall of bullet points and the audience reads ahead of you
- Figures copied from your paper are unreadable once projected: tiny axis labels, crowded legends, too many panels
- Your deck mixes five fonts, three color schemes and inconsistent alignment because it grew over several years
- Red and green lines carry the key comparison, and part of the audience cannot tell them apart
- A Beamer deck compiles but looks cramped, and you are not sure how to customize the theme without breaking it
- You have far more slides than minutes and cannot decide what to cut
What’s included — and what isn’t
Included
- Deck audit: a slide-by-slide review of message, density, hierarchy and visual consistency
- Restructuring the storyline so the talk has a clear opening question, a path through the evidence and a take-home message
- Assertion-evidence headlines: rewriting topic titles as full-sentence claims (for your approval, not invented findings)
- Master slide or theme setup: fonts, color palette, title and content layouts, footers, slide numbers and logo placement
- Redrawing charts and diagrams for projection: larger labels, direct labeling instead of legends, fewer colors, highlighted comparisons
- Accessibility checks: text and background contrast, colorblind-safe palettes, reading order, alt text for figures, and not relying on color alone
- Speaker notes structure, so detail removed from slides is not lost
- Beamer theme customization, TikZ or pgfplots figure cleanup, overlays for step-by-step reveals, and handout mode
- Export checks: PDF backup, embedded fonts, video and animation behavior on a different computer
Not included
- Creating the content or argument of an assessed student presentation — we give feedback and coaching on a deck you have drafted
- Inventing results, images or data to fill a slide, or presenting unpublished figures you do not have the rights to use
- Guaranteeing any mark, audience reaction or conference outcome
- Licensing stock imagery on your behalf; we recommend open-licensed sources or your own figures and note attribution requirements
What you receive
- Deck audit notes
- Annotated comments on each slide covering message, clutter, figure legibility and consistency, with the three to five changes that will make the biggest difference.
- Redesigned editable deck
- Your slides rebuilt in PowerPoint, Google Slides or Beamer source, with a working master template so you can add slides later without breaking the design.
- Reusable template
- A clean theme file (.potx, a Google Slides theme or a Beamer style file) with fonts, palette and layouts you can reuse for future talks.
- Figure set
- Charts and diagrams redrawn for projection, supplied as editable objects or high-resolution images, with source files where we produced them in R, Python or TikZ.
- Accessibility check summary
- Contrast results, alt text added, colorblind simulation notes and any remaining issues for you to decide on.
How it works
Brief
You send your current deck or notes, the event, audience, time limit and any required template. We ask what the single take-home message should be.
Audit and storyline
We return audit notes and a proposed slide sequence. You confirm what stays, what moves to backup slides and what goes into notes.
Template and sample slides
We design the master and three or four representative slides so you can approve the visual direction before the full rebuild.
Full redesign
We rebuild the deck, redraw figures and add speaker notes structure, flagging any headline claims you need to check against your results.
Review and handover
You review, we make one agreed round of revisions and deliver editable files, a PDF backup and the template.
Design principles and tools we use
- Assertion-evidence structure
- A sentence headline of one or two lines stating the point, supported by visual evidence rather than bullet lists; detail moves to notes or backup slides.
- Cognitive load and signaling
- Removing decorative elements, using highlighting and builds to direct attention, and pairing narration with visuals instead of duplicating text on screen.
- Contrast and legibility
- WCAG 2.x contrast guidance (4.5:1 for normal text, 3:1 for large text) used as a practical minimum, plus projector-safe font sizes and sans-serif body text.
- Colorblind-safe palettes
- Palettes such as Okabe–Ito or ColorBrewer's colorblind-safe schemes, checked with simulation tools, with shape or labels as a second cue.
- PowerPoint and Google Slides
- Slide masters and layouts, alt text, the built-in accessibility checker, Presenter view and notes, and PowerPoint's Speaker Coach for rehearsal where available.
- LaTeX Beamer
- Theme, color and font themes, custom templates, overlays, handout and notes-on-second-screen options, and figures in TikZ or pgfplots.
Why headlines should be sentences
A topic title such as 'Results' tells the audience where they are but not what to think. A sentence headline such as 'Dropout fell by a third after the mentoring program began' tells them what the chart below will show, so they spend their attention checking the evidence instead of guessing the point. It also disciplines the presenter: if you cannot write the headline, the slide probably has no single message.
We draft or tighten headlines from your notes and mark each one for you to verify. We never state a finding more strongly than your results support.
Charts built for a room, not a page
Journal figures are designed to be studied at close range. On a slide, the audience has seconds. We usually strip gridlines, enlarge axis text, replace legends with direct labels, show one comparison per slide and use a single accent color to mark the result you are talking about. Multi-panel figures are often split across a build sequence so each panel arrives when you discuss it.
- Keep the axis units and sample sizes that a critical audience will ask about
- Use builds to reveal a comparison step by step rather than all at once
- Keep dense tables as backup slides for questions
Choosing between PowerPoint, Google Slides and Beamer
PowerPoint gives the most layout control and the best offline presenting tools. Google Slides is easiest for co-authors editing together and presenting from any browser, with fewer typographic options. Beamer suits talks heavy in equations and code, keeps slides in version control alongside a paper, and produces a PDF that looks the same everywhere, at the cost of slower visual tweaking. We work in whichever you need and can convert between them, noting what does not translate cleanly, such as animations moving into Beamer overlays.
Accessibility is part of the design
Accessible slides help everyone, not only audience members with a visual impairment. We check contrast, avoid meaning carried by color alone, add alt text to informative images, set a logical reading order for screen readers and keep text large enough to read from the back of a room or a small laptop screen in a hybrid session. If your slides will be shared afterwards, we also check that the exported PDF keeps headings and alt text.
What the work can look like
Illustrative example — fictional data
Illustrative before-and-after for one results slide
A fictional postdoctoral researcher is giving a 15-minute departmental seminar on a school nutrition study. One slide shows a three-panel bar chart copied from a draft paper, under the title 'Results (2)'. The details below are invented to show the kind of change we make.
Before
Title 'Results (2)'. Three grouped bar charts, 10-point axis labels, a legend with six colors including red and green, and four bullet points beneath repeating the numbers.
After
Headline: 'Fruit intake rose in intervention schools, but only at lunchtime.' One chart showing the lunchtime comparison, two direct-labeled bars in a colorblind-safe blue and orange, 24-point labels and the confidence intervals kept. The breakfast and snack panels move to a backup slide; the bullet text moves into the speaker notes.
Why
The audience now knows the claim before looking at the chart and has only one comparison to check, which leaves time to talk about the caveat instead of reading.
Illustrative example only. The study, figures and wording are invented and do not describe a real client.
What you’ll need to provide
- The current deck, or a draft outline and the figures and tables you intend to show
- Event details: audience, room or platform, time limit and whether questions are included
- Any institutional or conference template, logo rules or accessibility requirements
- Source data or plotting code for charts you want redrawn
- For assessed presentations, the assessment brief and marking criteria so feedback stays within the rules
You don’t need everything ready to ask for a quote — tell us what you have and we’ll say what’s missing.
What affects price and turnaround
Price depends on
- Number of slides and how much restructuring the storyline needs
- Number of charts and diagrams to redraw, and whether source data is available
- Whether a reusable template or theme is part of the job
- Software: Beamer work with custom TikZ figures takes longer than PowerPoint layout
- Feedback-only review versus a full rebuild
Turnaround depends on
- Deck length and figure complexity
- How quickly you can confirm headline claims and the approved visual direction
- Whether you need the deck before a fixed talk date — tell us the date at the start
Every project is quoted individually. How we price our work.
Questions people ask before starting
Can you design the slides for my graded class presentation?
We can review a deck you have drafted and give detailed design feedback, show you how to set up a master template and explain how to improve your charts. The slides, content and delivery need to be your own, because they are what is being assessed. Check your course rules on help with design as well.
I have to use my university's template. Is that a problem?
No. Many institutions require a branded master. We work inside it, fix layouts that the template does not handle well and only suggest changes the brand rules allow.
Do you only use the assertion-evidence style?
It is our default for research talks because it works well for evidence-heavy content, but it is not a rule. Some audiences and formats, such as teaching slides meant to be read later, benefit from more text. We adapt to your purpose and your field's expectations.
Can you convert my PowerPoint to Beamer, or the other way?
Yes. Text, structure and most figures convert well. Complex animations, embedded video and some fonts do not have direct equivalents, so we tell you in advance what will change.
Will my unpublished results stay confidential?
Yes. We use your material only for your project, do not reuse figures or data in other work, and can sign a confidentiality agreement if your institution or funder requires one.
What if I only need a quick review before my talk tomorrow?
A short audit with the most important fixes is often possible at short notice. A full redesign needs more time, especially if figures must be redrawn from data.