Beyond Bullet Points, by Cliff Atkinson
After reading Tufte’s booklet on the Cognitive Style of PowerPoint and Doumont’s rebuttal, I wanted to see what this pro-PowerPoint presentation style was about. So, with full knowledge that the title was from Microsoft Press, I took the bait. It was very interesting. The gist of the book is that your presentations will be better if you tell a story and your stories will be better if you script them out and use pictures/graphic instead of bullet points. I haven’t tried it out yet, but I can imagine that it would be great to give a presentation like this. Even if I can’t find pictures/graphics to match every headline, I bet my presentations would benefit from scripting them using his suggestions.
The author’s blog is a good place to get a feel for his line of thinking and also get some samples.
I’m reading these works on theory and practice of effective visual communication to build up a working knowledge of tools and methods. Atkinson’s book has piqued my interest in developing cinematic writing skills to go along with the visuals.
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