finally the powerpoint discussion also arrived in the german press :-) read the news in the online editions of stern.de or zdf.de.
as I reported in an earlier post this summer, information graphics guru edward tufte posed the question if the microsoft piece of software is “evil”. or to be more precise he compared it to a school play: “very loud, very slow, and very simple.”
the whole discussion has been caused (not only but mainly) by talking heads founder david byrne’s book and DVD compilation “Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information”. rachel konrad of “The Associated Press” wrote an interesting article about this dispute for the online edition of “The Seattle Times” recently.
while I admire tufte for his absolutely brilliant books about information graphics I think he overshoots the mark by blaming a software product for the unability of a lot of people to get their message communicated visually and verbally (read a comment of richard saul wurman about tufte’s capabilities as a designer here).
my point is: at least for professional presentations the presentation design definitively belongs to the area of design let it be a graphic or interactive designer. however reflecting on the business presentations I attended in the last couple of months there have been only a few speakers who invested (either in terms of their own efforts or by hiring a designer) in an advanced presentation design.
it’s time for the design front to make management aware of the value and importance of a well designed (and I mean content, structure and layout!) presentations. in return I would wish that designers give up their somehow ‘patronising’ attitude of discussing good and bad OS platforms and software. in this respect david byrne did a good job: rather to explore than to restrict himself (either by his attitude or a piece of software).
