Killing me softly with your Powerpoint
Not another bulletpoint..........
I recently endured a series of ‘Death by PowerPoint’ presentations by a major global brand. We’ve all been there. Traped in uncomfortable chairs as bullet point after bullet point trundles up the screen, with the speaker simply parroting the the text from a laptop screen that the audience can quite easily read for themselves. Occasionally there was a snappy transition to ease the monotony. It was not a complex message. After the fifth consecutive presentation I felt I had to speak to someone before losing the will to live. I met one of the brand’s UK team and said ‘You could say all this in about three minutes using simple 2D animation. You don’t need to take 30 minutes. Lee and Sachi Lafever do a brilliant job with their Common Craft videos. ‘Ah, nice idea’ they said ‘but we don’t have the budget for animation at the moment’. ‘Look’ I said ‘This isn’t Disney – no dwarfs, deer or pixellated toys are involved – just some simple paper cut outs and a clever script’. Alas – they weren’t interested. There needs to be an EU Directive shrink-wrapped round every issue of PowerPoint. Use very sparingly or not at all. PowerPoint can clog the imagination, seriously harm your creativity and shorten the lives of your audience.
Tags: Commoncraft, PowerPoint
Kevin: a great image of how Powerpoint can kill an audience. Thanks for the link to Common Craft and their explanation videos.