The Golden
Ratio.

Here is a layout system, stop designing garbage. Dashboards, slides, apps — any screen, any tool. Same structure. No "creative input." Follow the rules.

Build it.

Build in

Screen

Page

Layout

Type

Sections

Header

16:9 · PowerPoint

Layout guide, not a product

—why it works

Marketing Slop.

Layout. Every Slide.

Title slides, content slides, section breaks — they all follow the same grid. Open any deck and you know exactly where things go. No guessing. No "creative differences."

Walls of Text

Text lives in the sidebar. The main area is for visuals, charts, and KPIs. If your audience is reading paragraphs off a slide, the slide failed. Show it, don't say it.

3/4

Of the Screen Is Visual

KPIs on the left. Chart in the center. Supporting text pushed to the sidebar. The eye hits the number first, the visual second, the words last — if at all.

Person Made This

Every slide, every dashboard, every report looks like it came from one person — because the system is the same. Not 10 people in 10 departments with 10 templates and 10 opinions.

∞

Slides, Same Bones

New content? Same grid. New department? Same grid. New executive who "just wants to see it differently"? Same grid, different data. The layout never changes. The story does.

Redesigns

Nobody asks "can we move this over a bit" because the layout answers that question before it's asked. KPIs left. Chart center. Text sidebar. Done. Move on to the actual work.

—how it works

The Rules.

Rule 1: Pick three colors and stop. One primary, one accent, one neutral. Every chart, every header, every highlight pulls from this palette. If you're reaching for a fourth color, stop and get some help.
Rule 2: Two fonts. Max. One sans-serif for headings, one for body. Or one font with weight variation. The moment someone pastes in Calibri next to your Segoe UI next to whatever PowerPoint defaulted to — the deck looks like a group project.
Rule 3: Lock your text sizes. Title: one size. Subtitle: one size. Body: one size. KPI numbers: one size. Write them down. If a number doesn't fit at the locked size, the number is too long or the box is too small. Don't shrink the font — fix the layout.
Rule 4: Header spans the top. It spans the full width. Title on one side, filters or logo on the other. Use it on every screen — the only reason to hide it is a full-bleed image or a title slide. Everything else gets the header.
Rule 5: KPIs get the left quarter. Big numbers stacked vertically. This is the "so what" column — the first thing anyone reads. Sparklines, donuts, trend arrows — fine. But the number comes first, the chart supports it.
Rule 6: Main content gets three quarters. Charts, tables, calendars, photos — the thing they came to see. If it doesn't need three quarters, the slide has too much on it. Remove something.
Rule 7: Text goes in the sidebar. Bullet points, notes, context — push it to a column. Never put a paragraph in the main content area. You're not writing a book. If the audience is reading your slide, the visual failed.
Rule 7a: If the slide is text-heavy, structure it. Split the main content into dual columns or a quad chart. Keep everything as lists — short bullets, not paragraphs. Two columns of six bullets beats one column of twelve. Four quadrants with headers beats a wall of text every time.
Rule 8: Fill the screen. If a slide doesn't have a sidebar, the main content expands to fill that space. Don't leave a blank column because the last slide had one. The sections turn on and off — the content that's there should use all the room it gets.
Rule 9: Same layout, every slide. Content slide, comparison slide, one-pager — the grid doesn't change. Sections turn on and off. New slide? Same bones, different data. This is how one person's deck looks like one person made it.
Rule 10: Highlight what the boss needs to see. Red, yellow, green — everyone understands it. But don't use your primary palette colors — use pastel shades so the highlights live in their own lane and don't compete with the design. Or go simpler: if the base is black text on white, flip it — white text on a red highlight. The inversion catches the eye without adding a new color system.
Rule 11: If it looks wrong, it is wrong. Remove something. The system works when you follow it. It breaks when you override it "just this once" for "just this slide."

—lessons learned

The takeaway.

Look — I get it. Nobody wakes up and says "I'm going to make an ugly dashboard today." It happens because there's no system. Everyone does their own thing, pastes in their favorite chart style, picks whatever font was already in the text box, and ships it. Multiply that across a team and you get a visual identity that looks like it was designed by a committee in a hurricane.

But it doesn't have to be that way. Give people a grid, a color palette, and a set of rules they can follow without thinking — and suddenly everything looks like it came from one person. Not because everyone became a designer overnight. Because the system did the designing for them. That's the future I want. Consistent, clean, readable visuals that let the data do the talking. We're not there yet. But we could be.

The GoldenRatio.