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Why Content and Slides Don't Mix

Why Content and Slides Don't Mix

The biggest problem with traditional slide software

•Darren Kim

Deckless isn't for everyone. It's not a design tool. So why use a designless text based slide maker like Deckless? Well, here's one of the problems I face when creating slide decks. I don't mind writing. Heck, I don't even mind designing.

However combining both the writing and design process is painful. Simply put, writing content and designing slides don't mix. What I mean by that is there are essentially 2 steps when creating slides.

  1. the creative and researching side to write the content
  2. the design side of transforming that content into a design

Like I said, I'm okay with writing and designing.

But once a slide is designed, what if I want to make changes or update my slide with a new page? Or if I don't like how I wrote something, or wanted to add a slide in between a page?

That's when slide software becomes a nightmare.

The Problem: Slides Lock You In The Design

Once you've designed your slides, you're basically stuck. Every change becomes a design problem, not just a content problem. Let's say you're giving a presentation next week and realize slide 5 needs a complete rewrite. This is especially true if you're using AI slide software such as Manus or Genspark to create the content and layouts for you and you have to edit the content (because it's AI).

Here's what happens:

  • You open the slide and start editing the text box
  • The text now overflows because your new content is longer
  • You shrink the font size to fit it
  • Now it looks inconsistent with slide 4 and slide 6
  • You adjust the layout manually
  • The bullet points are now misaligned
  • Your carefully chosen spacing is broken
  • You spend 10 minutes fixing one slide
  • Repeat for every text box you need to change

And that's just one change. What if you need to update content for every slide? Now you're manually adjusting text boxes and most importantly, your creative writing flow.

The design phase creates a prison. Once your content is in those text boxes, changing anything becomes a project in itself.

Text Boxes Suck

The fundamental issue is that traditional slide tools treat content as a bunch of independent text boxes positioned on a canvas. This works great for design. It's terrible for iteration.

When you write in a text editor or a doc, you just write. You add sentences. You delete paragraphs. You rearrange sections. The text flows naturally. Line breaks happen automatically. Spacing adjusts itself.

But slides? Every piece of text is trapped in a box. That box has a fixed size and position. Change the text, and you break the box. Break the box, and you break the design. Break the design, and you spend an hour fixing layouts instead of improving your content.

That's what makes Deckless different. The content dictates the form, not the other way around.

The Update Nightmare

Here's another scenario: You finish your deck on Monday. It looks perfect. You send it to your team.

On Thursday, someone points out some changes. Easy fix, right?

Wrong. Because that content was in a carefully positioned text box next to a chart. And that chart was aligned with two other elements. And now you're dragging boxes around like it's 1995.

Or worse: you realize an entire section needs to be rewritten.

This is why people stop updating their decks. It's not worth the hassle. So you present with awkward designs and alignment because fixing it would take hours.

Deckless Does It Different

That's why Deckless works differently. There is no separation between content and design. There is no true "design phase" where headers and content gets locked into text boxes.

You write in text. Your content is markdown text. Just text. When you need to change something, you change the text. Add a paragraph? Just type it. Reorder sections? Cut and paste. Insert a new slide? Add a --- to insert a new slide.

The layout happens automatically. Your content dictates what the slide looks like, and the styling is consistent across all slides because it's driven by predetermined layout rules, not manual positioning.

This means you can iterate on content without breaking design. You can update slides without spending an hour adjusting text boxes. You can add, remove, and rearrange slides like you're editing a document, because you are editing a document.

The creative process doesn't stop when you "finish" the deck. Because with Deckless, there is no hard line between draft and final. You can keep improving, updating, and iterating right up until you present.

And that's how content works in Deckless. Your slides don't lock you into design. They adapt to your content, not the other way around.

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