How to Avoid a Presentation Disaster [A Guide]
- Ink Narrates | The Presentation Design Agency
- May 8, 2024
- 6 min read
Updated: Aug 29
Clint, one of our clients, asked us a question while we were building his investor presentation. He said,
“How do you know when a presentation is about to go off the rails?”
Our Creative Director replied,
“The moment you start designing before deciding what you’re trying to say.”
As a presentation design agency, we work on many high-stakes decks throughout the year—pitches, launches, board meetings, you name it. And in the process, we’ve observed one common challenge: most people think good design can rescue a confusing story. It can’t.
So, in this blog, we’ll talk about how to spot the early signs of a presentation disaster and how to stay clear of it altogether.
In case you didn't know, we specialize in only one thing: making presentations. We can help you by designing your slides and writing your content too.
Why Presentation Disasters Happen
Let’s clear something up right away. Presentation disasters don’t happen because of bad luck. They happen because of bad prep. They happen because someone somewhere believed that “we’ll figure it out on the slides” is a strategy.
We’ve seen it all. Slides slapped together the night before. A 60-minute deck packed into 15 minutes. A dozen fonts. No core message. No pause for the audience to digest anything. And then surprise when people look confused.
The real problem? People underestimate what a presentation actually is. It’s not a report. It’s not your speaking notes. And it’s definitely not a place to dump every possible thing you know about a topic.
A presentation is a tool of influence. That’s it. Whether you’re pitching a product or convincing your leadership team, your only job is to make your audience care about what you’re saying and act on it. When that single focus is lost, the presentation spirals.
Most disasters begin with one of these:
Unclear objective
If you don’t know the one thing you want your audience to remember, they won’t remember anything.
Design-first thinking
Picking fonts and templates before finalizing your story is like painting the house before laying the foundation.
Overloading content
Just because PowerPoint lets you add 10 bullet points doesn’t mean you should. Attention is currency. Don’t spend it all on noise.
No audience context
Talking at people instead of speaking to what matters to them is a fast track to glazed eyes.
Presentation disasters are usually preventable. But you need to be honest about how they start: with assumptions, rush, or trying to impress instead of trying to communicate.
Now let’s talk about how to actually avoid them.
How to Avoid a Presentation Disaster
Avoiding a presentation disaster isn’t about last-minute heroics. It’s about building the thing right in the first place. And that begins long before you open PowerPoint or Keynote.
We’ve worked with hundreds of clients across industries—finance, real estate, tech, aviation, education, and more. Different subjects, different stakes. But the anatomy of a successful presentation? Surprisingly consistent. So let’s break down what actually works.
1. Know the Point Before the Slides
If you’re not crystal clear on your objective, your audience won’t be either. What’s the one takeaway you want them to remember? What do you want them to think, feel, or do after seeing your presentation?
This is not something you decide halfway through designing. This is the anchor for everything else. Skip this, and you’ll end up designing yourself into confusion.
Here’s what we do with every project: we ask our clients to complete one sentence before we touch a single slide.
“After this presentation, I want my audience to ________.”
It could be:“invest $1.5M”“approve the new product launch”“see us as the right agency partner”
Simple? Yes. But if you can’t fill in that blank, stop everything. Otherwise, you’ll start writing slides for yourself, not for your audience.
2. Treat Your Story Like a Map
Every good presentation has a story. Not a fairytale. A sequence. A build-up. A logic. A path from Point A to Point B that the audience can follow without getting lost or bored.
You’d be surprised how many decks we see that throw in background info, product features, customer pain points, financials, and future goals—just not in any order that makes sense.
Structure matters. We follow a narrative arc that works across formats: Context → Problem → Solution → Evidence → Ask
Here’s how it plays out:
Context: Frame the world they live in. The part they already agree with.
Problem: Point to the gap. The cost of doing nothing.
Solution: Enter your idea, product, or recommendation.
Evidence: Case studies, results, testimonials, prototypes.
Ask: What you want them to do now.
It works because it makes the audience feel like you’re not forcing them toward something. You’re guiding them. Slide by slide. You don’t need a dramatic TED-style story. You just need flow. Logic. Empathy. A clear path.
3. Slide Count Doesn’t Equal Quality
This one surprises people. But we’ll say it: a long presentation isn’t necessarily a bad one. A short one isn’t automatically great. Quality isn’t about slide count. It’s about what each slide is doing.
You could have 10 slides that say nothing and 40 that build a rock-solid case. The number is not the point. The function is.
We design with one rule in mind: One idea per slide.
When you stick to that, it becomes obvious when a slide is doing too much. The visual noise drops. The pacing improves. You give your audience a chance to actually absorb what you’re saying.
And when in doubt, split it. Two clean, focused slides are better than one overcrowded one.
4. Design Is Not Decoration
People still treat presentation design as an afterthought. That’s like showing up to a job interview in pajamas and hoping your résumé does the heavy lifting.
Design isn’t about making things pretty. It’s about clarity. Emphasis. Focus. It tells your audience where to look. What to remember. How to feel.
We’ve seen beautifully written content get ignored because it was buried in bad design. And we’ve seen simple messages pop because they were designed with purpose.
Here’s what great slide design does:
Uses white space to reduce clutter
Puts visual hierarchy in place (what to read first, second, third)
Keeps font styles and sizes consistent across the deck
Uses visuals to reinforce the story, not distract from it
Aligns with brand identity, but doesn’t let branding overpower the message
Want to know a quick test? If you mute the presenter and just show the slides, would the core message still come through? If not, the design needs work.
5. Rehearse Like It Matters—Because It Does
We’ve seen people spend 20 hours making a presentation and then walk in to deliver it as if they’re reading it for the first time.
Presentation disaster, right there.
Delivery is half the battle. It doesn’t mean you need to memorize everything. But you do need to know what’s coming next. You need to be familiar with the transitions, the timing, the key moments where you pause or emphasize.
You’re not reading slides. You’re walking your audience through an idea. That takes familiarity. And that only comes with rehearsal.
Pro tip: rehearse out loud, not in your head. Record yourself. Play it back. Fix the weird phrasing. Shorten your explanations. You’ll be shocked at what you catch.
And if you're presenting as a team? Rehearse together. Disasters often happen when one person derails the flow or takes up more time than expected.
6. Customize for the Audience (Always)
Here’s where many presentations fall flat. They’re too generic. You might have nailed the structure, the design, the delivery—but if it doesn’t speak directly to the people in the room, it won’t land.
Avoiding a presentation disaster means knowing what your audience cares about before you write a single word.
Ask yourself:
What’s their biggest concern right now?
What have they already seen a hundred times?
What would surprise them?
What’s their decision-making process?
Then build your slides to match their context, not just your content.
Here’s an example. We once designed two versions of the same deck for a client in the logistics space. One was for investors. One was for operations teams. The data was the same, but the framing was completely different. Why? Because what excites a VC isn’t what makes a regional manager care.
That’s where most teams go wrong—they build one deck and expect it to work for everyone.
7. Test for Red Flags
Before you hit Send or walk into the room, test your deck like your reputation depends on it. Because it does.
Look for these red flags:
Any slide with more than 30 words on it
Any bullet point longer than two lines
Fonts or colors changing without reason
Acronyms the audience might not understand
Transitions that feel abrupt
Slides that duplicate the same idea
Weak or missing call-to-action
We go through every deck we build with a checklist. We don’t assume. We inspect. Because the small stuff adds up. And it often separates a confident, clear presentation from one that leaves people confused or checked out.
Why Hire Us to Build your Presentation?
If you're reading this, you're probably working on a presentation right now. You could do it all yourself. But the reality is - that’s not going to give you the high-impact presentation you need. It’s a lot of guesswork, a lot of trial and error. And at the end of the day, you’ll be left with a presentation that’s “good enough,” not one that gets results. On the other hand, we’ve spent years crafting thousands of presentations, mastering both storytelling and design. Let us handle this for you, so you can focus on what you do best.