Deckset: A lightweight, stylish new presentation app featuring chic themes

You need a handsome presentation, pronto. You can’t bear the thought of launching PowerPoint and you don’t have the bandwidth for a full-on Keynote extravaganza. A brand new app from a brand new company might come to the rescue.

Deckset, a Mac app launched this week by Unsigned Integer, lets you prepare a presentation via a simple text document with Markdown syntax to quickly build an attractive slide deck. The app is compatible with most text editors.

While Deckset is designed to get your message out quickly, the presentation looks simple and chic and is easy to accomplish.

Deckset’s developers make it clear that this app is not designed as a replacement for feature-rich desktop presentation apps from Apple, Microsoft, and others, but rather as a simpler, faster way to create presentations on the fly with lightweight tools.

But the results still pack a punch.

Built-in themes such as Business Class, Letters from Sweden, Zurich, Franziska, Sketchnote, Poster, and Scherzkeks are designed to appeal to the character, subject, content, and style of the presentation. Each theme features between five and eight color variations and is paired with a cool designer typeface.

Images and videos can easily be included from the Web or from your hard drive by dragging them into the Deckset interface.

To run through the slideshow, choose Rehearse Slideshow from the View menu, or just play your slideshow full screen. When you’re done, export the document as a PDF.

Deckset is available for $19.99 from the Mac App Store.

➤ Deckset

 See also: Haiku Deck for iPhone lets you deliver presentations created with its iPad and Web apps and Swipe launches into beta as a Web app to create and share presentations to anyone on any device