Chapter 1 Lynell Burmark

Behind the surface appearance of annoyingly upbeat chirpiness and corny humor, the author has some very good ideas which should be more widely heeded. Microsoft PowerPoint is too universally derided to need much more explication of its downside. Here are some links: 


Julia Keller: Is PowerPoint the devil?
http://faculty.winthrop.edu/kosterj/WRIT465/management/juliakeller1.htm


Edward Tufte: PowerPoint is evil. Power corrupts but PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/ppt2.html


Power Corrupts, PowerPoint Corrupts Absolutely
http://www.usnwc.edu/Research---Gaming/War-Gaming/Faculty-Blog/February-2011-(1)/Power-Corrupts,-PowerPoint-Corrupts-Absolutely.aspx
This is an article on the US Naval War College site, no less, which takes its title from the Tufte article but makes points about improving .ppt presentations. Notable quote: "While death and taxes may be inevitable, death by PowerPoint is not."


If Abraham Lincoln had delivered the Gettysburg Address with PowerPoint:
http://www.norvig.com/Gettysburg/sld001.htm


And of course Dilbert:
http://search.dilbert.com/search?w=project+emu&x=0&y=0


What Lynell Burmark does is to show how a presentation can be given in a way that the medium enhances rather than overwhelms the message: colors are attractive, and are used to draw the eye to the most important points; text is squeezed out, condensed, minimized, reduced to a few essential words; image dominates the slide and any references are already included in the handout - built painstakingly and separately from the slide show.


A few of her major, um, points:
Color significantly increases the viewer's interest in looking at the slide and improves retention of its contents in memory.


Attractive and legible color combinations work best, this is worth some study. Yellow (about 570 nanometer wavelength) is the brightest and most noticeable, lying near the center of the human eye's spectrum of sensitivity to visible light and also lying near the center of the solar spectrum, not a coincidence. 


Pay attention to contrast. Good contrast improves legibility.


Concerning type: use less of it. Emphasize what is more important with bolding and size. Avoid all caps. Use legible fonts. Divisions between sections of text are as important as the text itself.


Include images, more to come on that topic.