5 ms·
I've loaned my hardcopy of this classic to many people in my industry. Regrettably it has not had any impact and Powerpoint still runs rampant. I am not a Tuf
by OldGuyInTheClub 2y ago
I've loaned my hardcopy of this classic to many people in my industry. Regrettably it has not had any impact and Powerpoint still runs rampant. I am not a Tufte fanboy but this article hits perfectly.
- PaulHoule 2y agoWhen I was in my business development phase I was taught to make presentations for C-levels at Fortune 500 companies like this: Make a Powerpoint deck with 50 slides. Compact that down to 20 slides without losing anything. Get to the point where you have 50 slides like that. Repeat this process two or three times until you have a deck that is stupendously high density that gives the impression that you respect their intelligence. --- At times in life Powerpoint has really been my medium, it is much easier for me to put together presentations by putting together various graphics and symbols in PP than anything else, and I've tried.
- OldGuyInTheClub 2y agoMy experience: The higher you go, the dumber they get.
- PaulHoule 2y agoI thought that too when I got started but I learned otherwise.
- OldGuyInTheClub 2y agoAt the tail end of my so-called career and I have learned it again and again.
- jncfhnb 2y agoPerhaps this belief contributed to your lack of a credibly titled career.
- OldGuyInTheClub 2y agoHeh heh. I think that's wrong but well played.
- jncfhnb 2y agoI’m a McKinsey consultant and this reads as kind of crazy. Nobody is ever doing anything with 50 distinct slides. My general advice is a title that is a sentence that explains your point, then a visual that proves it and a sidebar of supporting insights so you don’t have to be an expert at reading the visual. Frankly I think it’s very effective and is very closely tied to writing guidelines. The important thing is getting your thesis up top. The title of a page needs to be the only thing people really need to read to understand what you’re trying to convey. The contents of the page are just the details of why you’re saying it. Most people instinctively do this in reverse and have a page where they throw a visual onto the page and make the title of the page just an announcement of what the visual is; and then either verbally or with small text callouts explain why it matters.
- kqr 2y agoThis is the very thing TFA is against. It reduces complex arguments into one-sentence theses, one after another, luring the listener into compliance.
- copperx 2y agoIsn't that exactly what a consultant wants, though?
- jncfhnb 2y agoI’m only skimming the article tbh but all of the slides I’m seeing look terrible and useless. I don’t see much text about reducing arguments to one sentence theses. A one sentence thesis is good communication. That’s the point of a thesis statement. It’s the core idea behind most writing education. If you don’t have a clear thesis up front, then people have to divine what you’re trying to convey themselves bottom up from the arguments on the screen. “Luring the listener into compliance” is frankly the reader’s problem. PowerPoints are presentations, not debate stimulus. They are generally intended for one person to convey information, not foster a group discussion. It would be very bad to blame the concept of a blog if you’re drawn in by persuasive writing to a false idea. PowerPoints are bad when someone is using it and you can’t tell what they’re trying to tell you. Especially with regard to whether it has the verbal explanation or not.
- OhMeadhbh 2y agoI am absolutely a Tufte FanBoi, I even got him to autograph my copy of Visual Display of Quantitative Information.