As the in-house designer at a boutique investment firm, I spent a lot of time developing and iterating our pitch decks. An early challenge we faced was needing the slides to do double duty — that is work both on screen and printed. Why the distinction? There are different requirements and restraints for each — namely print needs high quality images and formatted pages whereas on screen will show the print format just fine, but perhaps with fields of empty space that distract the eye. Since print is the fussier customer I decided to design from a “print-first” standpoint with the following hard rules: always plenty of white border and always a printable size. Over time we settled on the printable size of half letter (8.5”x 5.5”).
To manage regular updates for multiple strategies and control version, I created an InDesign automation series with guides and templates for easy updating.
