Pitch Deck Design Tips to Impress Investors [Plus Templates] (2023)

You’re almost nearing the end of presenting a pitch deck design to a room full of suited and booted individuals. In your mind, you’re the Super Mario in the hall – about to reach the princess, which, in this case, is the required funding.

Your presentation ends.

But you’re met with silence. No applause. No nods of approval. You, Mario, get the ending you never imagined – no princess!

Where did you go wrong?

Perhaps your content and core ideas were awesome. 🔥 But you didn’t pay attention to your pitch deck design.

You see, your pitch deck should not only pack a good business plan but its design should also clearly communicate your message and leave a lasting impression on your audience.

So the next time you want to see sparks of interest among investors, pay attention to your pitch deck design. To help in your endeavor, we’d like to share some incredible pitch deck design tips with you.

So what are we waiting for? Let’s briefly recap what a pitch deck is and dive straight into pitch deck design tips, sharing Visme’s beautiful pitch deck templates along the way.

What is a Pitch Deck?

A pitch deck is a brief presentation discussing your business idea and the future growth potential that you give to potential investors to encourage them to invest in your work.

Now let’s take this definition to the chopping board:

• It’s a brief presentation. That’s brief. So no more than 19 slides.
• It discusses how your business solves its audience’s pain point(s).
• It projects growth you expect (and also what you’ve already achieved).
• Lastly, it encourages investors to finance your business.

In these slides, aim to introduce yourself and your team, lay out the problem and deliver its solution and explain your unique selling proposition. Don’t forget to look at the market and prevailing competition and give an investment plan along with your contact information.

Mentioning 19 slides here doesn’t mean you stick with 19. You can squeeze all the info into 10 slides too, as Guy Kawaski suggests.

Remember, the briefer your presentation is, the better.

Short presentations are pros at holding your audience’s attention. Plus, you don’t end up overloading them with information. Therefore, in a way, you make it easy for them to call the shots in your favor.

Now that the definition is out of the way, let’s talk pitch deck design.

Pitch Deck Design Tips to Impress Investors

Your pitch deck design’s goal should be to make your content easy to read. So each tip that we share has mainly one goal – to simplify complex concepts so potential investors focus on making a favorable call for you instead of working to demystify your business proposal.

Ready to create an engaging pitch deck design to wow the decision makers?

On we go:

1. Make sure your design communicates your message.

Your pitch deck design should visually communicate your message, not obstruct it. In certain instances, the latter can happen.

Here’s when your pitch deck design ruins your content:

• There’s no visual hierarchy. Keep these visual hierarchy principles in mind as you set to work.
• The colors you pick either don’t go with each other or dull your message. Dive into an in-depth guide for picking the right colors or go through these 5 quick tips for selecting colors.
• The fonts you select are not readable. This could be because of your font size or type. Choose them carefully so your presentation is easy to consume and aligns with your brand personality too.
• You forget all about whitespace or the space between various design elements. Your goal should be to achieve a balance in your text and design so one doesn’t overpower the other.

To play it safe, use a minimal design and a pastel color scheme to ensure your message stands out as in the case of this pitch deck template:

Customize this pitch deck template and make it your own!Edit and Download

Not only does this template’s minimal design make it unique but the bright red front page makes the design eye-catching. The color red not only attracts attention but also elicits emotions of joy, energy and attention.

2. Visualize data and numbers.

Numbers are great weapons to convince your audience. But if you fit them in a pool of text, they rarely leave the impact you want them to. The solution? Visualize them. Tell a story with your stats using data visualization.

You can get an idea of how to visualize data from this piece that focuses on data visualization for reports. Want to watch the blog post instead? Catch the video version below:

Meanwhile, here’s a template to show you how impactful data visualization can be. It uses two different types of charts to present statistics:

Customize this pitch deck template and make it your own!Edit and Download

3. Tug at the investors’ emotions.

It makes sense to use logic to pursue people to take decisions in your favor, right? But we are all emotional beings at heart. So are the VCs you’re targeting.

Therefore, the stats you share with them make your case. The emotional hooks you add win your case.

But how do you add these emotional teasers? By using storytelling and using visually stunning graphics that narrate your customers’ pain point and its solution.

This pitch deck template does this best with the background images, tweets and check-in design motifs to tell the story of connecting friends using an AI-powered mobile app.

Customize this pitch deck template and make it your own!Edit and Download

4. Use a readable font color.

Have you ever come across a design that’s pretty down to its bone but the text isn’t visible because it’s gray on a white background? That’s a serious design flaw. And one that you wouldn’t want to replicate in your pitch deck design.

Go for dark text on a white or light background. This makes your presentation easy to read on screens and dark rooms when projected on a wall.

In the same breath, make sure your font type and size are easy to understand. With this, your reader gets the idea in one look instead of having to squint and give up. Or worse, ignore your pitch deck altogether.

Look at how this pitch deck template by Visme makes sure the font color, size as well as type are on-point and very easy to consume.

Customize this pitch deck template and make it your own!Edit and Download

5. Make sure your pitch deck design aligns with your branding.

Facebook’s pitch deck design is based on the blue we know as the Facebook blue. Why? Because a consistent brand makes your idea memorable.

You’d recognize Facebook’s blue anywhere, wouldn’t you?

That’s why creating a design that is based on your visual branding style is essential. You get to be consistent. And you leave a solid impression too. All while looking wicked professional. Bullseye!

If you think designing a pitch deck based on your branding from the scratch is too much work, try pitch deck templates. Visme offers a bank of pitch deck templates that are easily customizable.

Let’s suppose you like the template below.

All you need to do is change the colors and fonts according to your branding. Add your logo where ‘Work + Biz’ is. You are also at liberty to replace background images with pictures that better represent your business or tell your customer’s journey. And you’re all set.

Customize this pitch deck template and make it your own!Edit and Download

6. Be creative – don’t be afraid of trying new things.

Piccsy’s pitch deck design is an online infographic instead of a traditional slide deck. You can try that too.

Or, you can create a unique interactive pitch deck design like we did with Visme’s annual report.

Alternatively, add interactive comparison charts in your pitch deck design slides. For instance, add a chart to compare your business with that of your competitors. Say, a quick versus look that shows you as the clear winner.

We created this pitch deck template inspired by Piccsy’s pitch deck:

Customize this pitch deck template and make it your own!Edit and Download

You can make a similar infographic-based pitch deck design as well using Visme.

7. Design for your audience’s taste.

The primary rule of design is to design for your audience.

They’re the ones who are going to consume your design so it’s best if it meets their taste. In doing so, you’re at better odds of winning your investors’ attention and (investment subsequently).

Here’s an example. LinkedIn’s pitch deck design is serious. Because its audience is in the B2B sphere.

On the flip side, Podozi’s pitch deck design isn’t all that serious. Look at the images they use and you’ll instantly know their audience entails young women of color.

Lesson learned is simple – design with your audience in mind. If you’re going to use a pitch deck template, tweak it to your audience’s preferences starting with picking one that aligns best with them.

This template, for example, is best suited for millennials:

Customize this pitch deck template and make it your own!Edit and Download

8. Include attention-capturing design elements.

You’ve a variety of design elements to choose from. Read on to find out your best options:

Use charts to showcase numbers.

Pick from 44 different chart types to add to your pitch deck design.

One tip to up your design game here – make sure you choose charts that are super simple to understand. Your audience doesn’t have the chart with them, which means they can’t read the axis. So you need to stick with including readable charts like a circle graph or a bar chart.

Include a flow chart to visualize problems.

Flow charts make complex things simple. This pitch deck template leverages a flow chart well:

Customize this pitch deck template and make it your own!Edit and Download

Add timelines to show your company’s growth.

There’s nothing more meh than a paragraph packed with dates. They’re a hot mess. However, a timeline can organize things to give a quick idea of your company’s progress.

The timeline in this pitch deck template is clear as well as visually appealing. It’s exactly what you need to create an impressive pitch deck:

Customize this pitch deck template and make it your own!Edit and Download

Include interesting shapes.

Don’t just use shapes once or twice in your pitch deck design. Pick one or two and use them consistently throughout your presentation. For instance, this one pitch deck template uses triangles in the pitch deck.

Customize this pitch deck template and make it your own!Edit and Download

These design motifs look, particularly, amazing when used to highlight teammates, deviating from the regular way of introducing team members:

Bonus tip – ensure all the headshots you use to show your teammates have the same background. If that’s not possible, use the same filter over the picture for a sense of consistency like in the example above.

9. Use background images.

Images are powerful storytellers. They narrate your customer’s pain and show how your product or service can alleviate it.

Just make sure your images are all impactful. What’s more, ensure your images flow with each other by telling a consistent message.

If it’s a challenge coming up with same colored photos, add a color filter for uniformity. With Visme, you can choose from Mayfair, Lark, Reyes and many more.

Want a stellar idea for background images?

Add your teammates’ pictures at work. This shows your team’s passion and nothing attracts investors like passion. It’s contagious.

The pitch deck template below observes all these points made. See that all background images deliver a consistent message. They also look uniform, thanks to the filter.

Customize this pitch deck template and make it your own!Edit and Download

10. Get creative with your testimonials.

Social proof is crucial so much so that 80% of the shoppers trust reviews like they trust personal recommendations.

Regardless of the type of social proof you use, let design highlight it properly.

This ensures your message is drilled in the investors’ minds. And they go from “Hey no one knows this biz,” to “Hey! Look what everyone is saying. I might as well invest in it.”

Need some inspiration? Check out this template by Visme. It shares users’ tweets to show how well the business is doing:

Customize this pitch deck template and make it your own!Edit and Download

11. Use tiled-layout for presenting complex information.

Presenting complex information can take numerous slides. But remember what we discussed at the start of this post? A pitch deck has to be brief.

One way to break down complex information is by presenting it in a titled layout style. Another plus to this format? Tilted layout breaks info into digestible bits, making it easily consumable.

One thing you need to keep in mind here though – all design elements including the font need to be consistent across the tiles. And don’t experiment with different colors. Stick to colors within your color palette.

See how this template does this:

Customize this pitch deck template and make it your own!Edit and Download

12. Make your pitch deck design consistent.

Your pitch deck design should be simple and streamlined. It also needs to flow well. These are design essentials that you’d never miss if you designed your presentation using a pitch deck template.

Keep design elements like your header, footer and style icons consistent. If you’re using a design motif such as a shape like we discussed above, make sure it’s also consistent throughout your slides.

The semi-circle design motif on the left of this presentation template is used uniformly throughout the slides.

Customize this pitch deck template and make it your own!Edit and Download

13. Choose one theme for your pitch deck design but design slides differently.

Last on this list of pitch deck design tips is sticking to one theme but altering the slide design.

The thing is using the same slide to deliver different points to reinforce your message can be focus-sucking. Altering each slide’s design can, however, keep your audience hooked.

You only need to make sure you design slides according to your theme. So you’ve different slide layouts but one theme.

A pitch deck template can prevent any slips in this case as well. Take a closer look at this template by Visme and notice how it has different slide designs, all following the same theme:

Customize this pitch deck template and make it your own!Edit and Download

How to Create Pitch Decks in Visme

Want a bit more info on creating a beautiful presentation or pitch deck right here inside Visme? Check out our quick 5-minute video below.

Start Designing an Impressive Pitch Deck Design Today

So that’s a wrap. We’ve covered several pitch deck design tips ranging from keeping your design minimalist to getting creative with your testimonials and using a titled format.

Use a pitch deck template as your savior. Head over to Visme to sign up for free and start preparing a brilliant pitch deck design today.