David Bolton Strikes Again

Edward R. Tufte – The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint

Yes, I realise the irony of using bullet points to summarise this too. But some notes are better than no notes.

• Presenters love PowerPoint, not audiences
• PP is so low on information density that truths must be abbreviated to fit
• Bullets can’t show complex relationships, can only show ONE of these:

• Sequence
• Priority
• Or simple set membership

Then we learned about “bullets” – little black circles in front of phrases that were supposed to summarise things. There was one after another of these goddamn bullets in our briefing books on slides

• Thin content -> boring presentations -> adding PPPhluff
• Greater detail means greater clarity and gives context
• Branding on PP slides is insidious
• “The way to make big improvements in a presentation is to get better content”
• Avoid hierarchies of bullets
• Never read from slides
• Never use PP for paper reports
• Instead of PP, use handouts of additional material that is dense in information