Stop thinking in slides

There’s a moment in almost every presentation project where someone opens PowerPoint and starts typing bullet points. Slide 1: Introduction. Slide 2: The Problem. Slide 3: Our Solution.

And right there, before a single word has been written, before anyone has thought about what they actually want to say, the presentation is already failing.

The Slide Trap

Here’s the thing about slides: they’re containers. They hold things. But a great presentation isn’t a series of containers. It’s a journey. And you can’t design a journey by starting with the boxes.

My team and I have a different approach. We call it finding The Big Picture.

Before we open any software, before we think about fonts or templates or transitions, we ask one question:

What is the visual world this content actually lives in?

Not “what should slide 3 look like.” Not “should we use icons or photos.” But if this story were a place, where would it be? If this message were a landscape, what would the horizon look like?

That question changes everything.

What We Mean by a Visual Metaphor

Over the years, my team has turned presentations into mountain expeditions, deep-space journeys, solar system explorations, rocket launches, architectural blueprints, ocean voyages, and more.

Not because these are flashy gimmicks. But because the right visual metaphor does something slides alone never can: it creates narrative gravity.

When your audience knows they’re on a mountain, they feel the climb. They understand there are base camps along the way. They feel the air thinning as you reach the hard truths, and they experience the summit when you land your conclusion.

That’s not decoration. That’s structure. It’s the difference between a presentation that people sit through and one they remember.

How to Find Your Visual Thread

So how do you find it? Here’s how we approach it, and how you can too.

1. Step away from the screen entirely.

Seriously. Close the laptop. The moment you’re in PowerPoint, your brain starts thinking in slides. Take a piece of paper, a whiteboard, a walk. Anything that gets you away from the grid.

2. Distil the core emotion first, not the content.

Ask yourself: what do I want the audience to feel at the end of this? Inspired? Certain? Urgent? Calm? That emotional destination is your compass. The visual world you choose should carry that feeling inherently.

3. Ask what this story is really about.

Not the surface subject. The deeper theme. A pitch about a new product might really be about courage in uncertainty. A company update might really be about navigating change. A strategy presentation might really be about choosing your future. Once you name the deeper theme, visual metaphors start suggesting themselves.

4. Let the metaphor work structurally, not just decoratively.

A great metaphor isn’t a background image you slap behind bullet points. It’s a framework that organises your content. Stages of a journey become sections of your narrative. The landscape reflects your message. Audiences navigate with you because the visual world makes the logic intuitive.

5. Test it out loud before you build anything.

Can you explain your presentation using the metaphor naturally? “We’re taking you on a journey from the coast to the summit. Here’s where we are today, here are the challenges we face on the climb, and here’s what the view looks like when we get there.” If it flows, you’ve found it. If it feels forced, keep looking.

The Questions to Ask Yourself

When you’re sitting with a blank page, try these:

• If this presentation were a place, where would it be?
• If this message had a texture or atmosphere, what would it feel like?
• What journey does the audience go on, and what’s the transformation?
• What does the world look like at the beginning, and how is it different at the end?
• Is there a natural tension in the story, a climb, a voyage, an exploration, that mirrors the content?

You won’t always find a grand cosmic metaphor. Sometimes the visual world is something quieter: a blueprint, a garden, a city at different times of day. The scale doesn’t matter. What matters is that it’s true to the content and that it creates coherence across the whole experience.

The Result: A Presentation That Feels Like a Journey

When you get this right, something remarkable happens: the audience stops seeing slides and starts experiencing a narrative.

They’re not watching you present. They’re travelling with you. The visual world holds their attention between the words. The journey gives them a sense of progress. And when you reach the end, they feel they’ve arrived somewhere, not just witnessed information being transferred.

That’s the difference between a presentation and a story.

And it all starts by closing PowerPoint, just for a while, and asking what world your content truly belongs in.