01.12.05
Powerpoint isn’t very powerful
Powerpoint
- Use Bullets
- They can even be nested
- More bullets: Isn’t this neat?
- Slide templates don’t allow you to put much information.
- I would be out of space already
Examples
- The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint in Powerpoint
- Note that I cheated
- An actual presentation you wouldn’t be able
to follow those links - The Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation
Enough of that.
I thought I had read Tufte’s essay a while back, but when I went searching for it again it seems that he has never posted it online and I haven’t bought it yet. I know I read a similar one at least. The main idea is that the Powerpoint format does not lend itself to presenting complex information. I know that when I have tried to give slide based presentations like this, I had to split interrelated information onto several different slides and then constantly switch back and forth. Not very good for comprehension.
My brother gave me another of Tufte’s books for christmas. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. I haven’t dug into it yet, but I anticipate a good read. Displaying lots of information in an intelligent manner is something that we have to deal with regularly. The client wants to see all the data at once, but the screen can’t be ‘complex’.