YOU CAN PLAN A PRODUCTIVE DAY ON ONE SHEET OF PAPER.

I’ve been giving more presentations over the last couple of years, and that has meant building more slidedecks. I tend to follow the Garr Reynolds’ model of presentation building, and I wind up using the slides as triggers more than anything else. So when Deckset for Mac hit the scene last week, I was very intrigued.

Deckset allows you to build slidedecks using Markdown, and I find that incredibly appealing. Why? Because I do almost all of my writing in Markdown, and being able to create slidedecks using the same language allows me to spend more time improving my Markdown skills.

To get started, you simply start a new slidedeck and it opens up a Markdown text editor (in my case that was Byword) and you can then get building. Deckset comes with some example slidedecks that help you through the creation process, which does take some getting used to even if you’re a seasoned Markdown user. As you build each slide you can see your Deckset deck take shape and you can also preview any of the various themes during the creation process. It doesn’t come with many, but each of them has their own unique charm and would be suited for various types of presentations. I would imagine that more themes will be released and the ability to import third-party themes may not be too far down the road.

I was hoping to be able to use Deckset for my presentation yesterday, but I just didn’t have the time to get it done. I made it about a third of the way through and realized that it was best to leave that presentation in Keynote…this time around. But I’m happy I took that time to play with it, because I really liked what I saw.

The price might be a bit much for some ($19.99) but if you want to be able to build simple slidedecks in an environment that you do a lot of your writing in already, then Deckset for Mac is an app you should add to your arsenal. I’ll definitely be using it for all of my slidedecks going forward.