How I think about presentations: the Coherence Cloud
Over sixteen years I’ve noticed that the presentations that work all share the same four things. I call it the Coherence Cloud, and it’s what I design every project around.
Connection
A presentation has to connect with the specific room it’s for. Before anything else, I work out who’s watching, what they need to believe, and what will actually move them, then design to that, not to a generic idea of “good slides.”
Clarity
If the audience has to work to understand a slide, the slide has failed. Clarity is the whole job: the right thing emphasised, the noise removed, complex information made immediate. Most of my work is in service of this one principle.
Consistency
How a presentation holds together is read as how seriously you take the room. One grid, one system, the brand handled properly throughout, so the whole thing signals competence before you’ve said a word.
Continuity
Your presentation isn’t a one-off, it sits within everything else your brand puts out, and it should feel like part of the same story. I design with that bigger picture in mind, so nothing you present ever feels disconnected from the rest of you.
A bit about me
I’m a presentation designer with sixteen years behind me, including as former Global Head of Design at Publicis Media. I’ve designed presentations for LVMH, Disney, Meta, Pfizer and HSBC, among many others. These are the high-stakes decks that win accounts, raise money, and get boards to say yes.
I’ve worked on hundreds of pitches over the years, and these days I work with a mix of large companies, the agencies that serve them, and clients who come to me directly. Different rooms, same standard: the best presentation design I can do, delivered by me.
I started Depicts because the best presentation work happens when the person who understands your problem is the person doing the design, not three handovers removed from it. So that’s how I run it: you brief me, I design it, and you deal with me the whole way through. I take on a limited number of projects at a time, because doing this properly takes attention.
Sixteen years in, I know PowerPoint at a level most people never reach. I’ve built my own VB macros for handling big, complex edits cleanly, and I use specialist plugins to do things like carry animation and effects accurately across a whole deck. None of that is about cutting corners or saving time, it’s about being able to make things work properly, so the finished presentation is better than what most designers can produce. That depth is part of what you get working with me rather than someone who only knows the surface of the tool.
If you want to see how I think in more detail, I write about the craft and the business of presentation design. A good place to start is my honest breakdown of what presentation design costs in the UK, or designing with intention rather than intuition on what actually makes a deck work.
Some serious rooms
A luxury house with 75+ elite brands
The studio behind the highest-grossing films
The planet’s leading food and drink company
The maker of the world’s most valuable medicine
One of the world’s biggest banks
The name behind the biggest social apps
The largest advertising group on earth
A prime-London property empire worth billions
Europe’s largest live events company
I keep it simple. You work with me directly, start to finish, so the person who understands your problem is the person designing your slides. No account managers, no handovers, no brief getting watered down on its way to whoever actually does the work.
I’ll get to know you, your audience, and what the deck is really trying to do, what a good outcome actually looks like if it lands. I’ll look at your template and branding, and how to push your brand assets further within the slides where it helps. I work out which messages need shouting and which need to sit back, so the story is easy to follow. Navigation helps people keep their place, iconography highlights what matters, and every choice is there to make something clearer.
I can push the creative on a deck for a lifestyle brand and make it bold, or stay completely on-brand for an investment bank.
Not sure how to brief a designer? No problem. I work with people who’ve never done it before all the time, and it’s easier than you’d think.
Dan Plumb
Designer, Project Manager, and Everything Else.
How I work
No account managers, no rotating team, no brief lost in a handover. You deal with me, I do the work, and I’m honest with you, including when I think a different approach would serve you better. I take on a limited number of projects at a time, because doing this properly takes attention, and attention doesn’t scale infinitely.
I came up in agency pitch culture, where the work happens whenever the deadline needs it to, evenings, weekends, whatever the pitch demands. So tight turnarounds and clients in other time zones are normal to me, not a problem to be worked around.
For most projects, you get me start to finish. For the big ones, a large branding job, a high volume of decks, a tight deadline on a major project, I can bring in a small group of excellent people I’ve worked with for years and trust completely. You still deal with me, I still run it and answer for it. I’ve just got the right hands to call on when a project needs more than one pair.
If that’s the way you’d want to work, tell me what you’re working on.
Transparency
Communication
Enthusiasm
Open-mindedness
Optimism
