klyjen.blog

Every couple of months, I receive a brochure advertising the works of Edward Tufte, author of Visual Explanations, Envisioning Information, and The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. (Side note: he has seiminars in the DC area on May 11, 12, and 13, 2004.) Included in the brochure is a brief advertisement for The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint, with an absolutely fabulous companion photograph/poster.

My favorite quote from the poster? Comrade, why are we having this meeting? The rate of information transfer is asymptotically approaching zero!

I hate hate HATE almost ALL Powerpoint presentations. They have reduced professionals to five-year olds with crayons: ooh! Add some color here! Add a swirly bullet point there! The rare, useful Powerpoint presentation tends to involve pictures and processes--things like mapping out the steps of a workflow process, for example, where the ability to move forward and backward through the process is important and something like a chalkboard or whiteboard would involve a lot of re-creating of the wheel.

See also: The Making of the Gettysburg Address using the Auto-Content Wizard