Don't judge a book by its cover -- even though it is a "design" book.

The Non-Designer’s Design Book (Third edition) by Robin Williams - not to be confused with the famous comedian by the same name - provides “design and typographic principles for the visual novice.” Although this book does not focus on PowerPoint presentations at all (mainly desktop publishing examples - business cards, brochures, newsletters, etc.), many of her design principles are transferable to the PowerPoint world. I became interested in reading this book when Garr Reynolds referenced her in his Presentation Zen book. More…

Just one flavor of PowerPoint? (c)iStockPhoto / cnicbc

In my previous blog post, I discussed the different flavors of PowerPoint that exist. It’s not just vanilla or even double-chocolate fudge brownie. We need to accept the fact that there are multiple flavors — at least 31 — if not more. More…

Is there really only one flavor of PowerPoint? (c)iStockPhoto / RapidEye

Too often I hear people talk about PowerPoint presentations like there is only one flavor of PowerPoint. If you read popular presentation design books like Presentation Zen or Slide:ology, you’d swear that most people are tasked with keynote presentations like Seth Godin and Steve Jobs are. A more visual approach with less text is definitely a good strategy for keynote presentations. However, let’s be realistic that only about 0.012% of presenters are delivering keynote presentations on a regular basis. More…

Mmmm. Fruit salad. It all looks good. But where do I focus? (c) iStockPhoto / Adventure Photo

By default PowerPoint or Excel 2007 will create multicolored pie charts or single-colored bar charts. Unfortunately, these default color combinations can cause charts to communicate less effectively unless they are modified.

In most cases, when you’re using charts in PowerPoint slides you’re trying to highlight a specific data point or a subset of data points:

• “Look at how much higher the revenue is for this product”
• “See how the average for this country is much lower than those of other countries”
• “Notice how the quality score of this product is practically the same as those of other cheaper products” More…

If you grew up playing video games in the 80’s, you’ll have fond memories of Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man. These classic arcade games were revolutionary in their day and continue to be favorites today. If you compare their simple 2D format to today’s lifelike first-person shooters, you wonder why people still continue to play them. The fact is their simple game play is still infectious. More…