Horrible Powerpoint graphics

[shootingstar]

No doubt, most of us have floored by some truly busy-looking, horrendous Powerpoint slide designs:

http://toptrends.nowandnext.com/?p=913

At one place where I worked, there were alot of truly poorly designed slides for clients...just too much info. packed in 1 slideframe. No consideration that it's being shown in a room of 200 people. Not even 20 people could absorb a busy looking slideframe.

Or eye-straining colours for slide backgrounds, fonts.

[limewave]

I truly dislike PowerPoint. Five years ago I was offered a six figure job designing PowerPoint presentations. DH and I got all excited, we shopped around for a big house, new bikes, etc. But I just could not imagine spending every day of my life designing slideshows. Gack! That and I would have been required to wear a suit every day.

[Becky]

I hate Powerpoint. IMO, its only legitimate purpose is to conveniently display photos or other visual aids during an oral presentation. Otherwise, get rid of it.

[PamNY]

Horrible graphic design and boring/confusing presentations are nothing new, but computers have made them easier to create.

Here's a sample of what Edward Tufte thinks.

[bmccasland]

They don't call it "death by Power Point" for nothin'.

On the other hand, I remember transferring tables and things, then printing to slide film. Next step was to drive to the a photo processor to get my slides processed for the presentation. Power point just made it digital and eliminated the photo processor.

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

As patent invention illustrators, we receive powerpoint file 'drawings' all the time from clients. OMG, if they weren't so bad they'd be amusing. But it helps keep us in business to have to redraw everything properly.

We call it 'PooPooPoint'.

[Becky]

Horrible graphic design and boring/confusing presentations are nothing new, but computers have made them easier to create.

Here's a sample of what Edward Tufte thinks.

I have that book somewhere- good stuff!

[shootingstar]

I truly dislike PowerPoint. Five years ago I was offered a six figure job designing PowerPoint presentations. DH and I got all excited, we shopped around for a big house, new bikes, etc. But I just could not imagine spending every day of my life designing slideshows. Gack! That and I would have been required to wear a suit every day.

Wouldn't Powerpoint be quite limiting for anyone with graphic design skills/training?

Methinks some people create their business or academic Powerpoint slideshows as if they are like commercials or as if really they have the slideshow as a pretense ..for the print handouts themselves after the presentation.

One job included researching databases made up tons and tons of business Powerpoint presentations where I saw the godawful stuff. Probably many with recycled slideframes from other sources.

Even strictly from the perspective of textual marketing: way too many words are jammed into 1 frame too often.

[limewave]

As patent invention illustrators, we receive powerpoint file 'drawings' all the time from clients. OMG, if they weren't so bad they'd be amusing. But it helps keep us in business to have to redraw everything properly.

We call it 'PooPooPoint'.

Ha ha ha. My dad was just telling me how much he likes to "illustrate" in ppt for his "design" projects.

Whatever works for you . . .

[smilingcat]

reduces everything into just a visual version of sound bites. Much of what I used to see is distraction. Doesn't say much and just eye candy and mind candy.

I understand some kids are using ppt for their reports. Is this true? if so, that's a very sad state of affairs.

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

I love it when someone makes a Poopoopoint graph with about 25 different pretty colored data items representing various things, then the patent attorney sends us a black and white zeroxed copy and asks us to draw the official version for sending to the patent office. It's rather useless trying to decipher 25 shades of gray that all look pretty much the same on a grainy zerox of a copy of a copy. So we ask for the color version so we can at least make it accurate, and they 'can't find' the original color version, and the person who made the graph has moved on to another company. So there you have a completely meaningless graph that someone spent a lot of time picking out pretty colors for. If only they had used hatched or patterned fills...

[Eden]

I work as a photographer/designer in a hospital. If it weren't for ppt, there'd still be a lot more of us.... but then again 3/4 our time would be spent making copy slides zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz (ack - I just realized I cannot for the life of me remember how to make a blue slide with film.... I used to make so many....)

I recently saw some (old I think) research paper about slide shows and information retention. Someone actually made slides in all sorts of colors raging from traditional white text on blue to some rather horrendous and hard to read color combos with serif, san serif and script text styles. It came as no surprise that script wasn't so great, but the color combo that the person determined worked best was noxious.... I seem to remember it was burgundy text on an orange background..... sounds more likely to make your eyes bleed than to help you remember.

[crazycanuck]

For one of my classes at uni (planning graphics & design) I didn't want to be like everyone else & do the first assignment (my part of a group assignment) on paper because it's a waste. A powerpoint slide came to mind & just used that.


Please tell me what else I can use for presentations @ uni rather than powerpoint?