Re: [chat] Re: [SLUG] MS Powerpoint is a killer

[Mary Gardiner <mary-slug@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Dec 16, 2003, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> Besides, the supercharged sales and marketing presentations are done
> up properly by designers and speechwriters, just like the words of the
> guy up front. Coddling up clarity of ideas in slides is probably as
> tough as usability, print design, yada yada.

Don't leave out the difficulty of really good writing either -- it's
single mode (unlike usability work which requires talents in several
modes and unlike speaking with slides which is verbal and written) but
part of the art none the less.

Writing good slide content (ignoring the visual design for a sec) is the
equivalent of writing a really good abstract. People who've written
abstracts will sympathise, as will people who've read them.

Interestingly, both your examples are multi-modal: blogs are writing and
web design, although most are more writing than design and certainly
most use writing for communication more than design; and speaking with
slides involves writing, speech and visual design. But multi-modal
rhetorical skills aren't well taught anywhere except the adult level
speaking workshops.

Tangentially...

At the moment, I'm semi- seeking intro level courses on visual design,
oriented towards web design but not strictly tool-based (ie I want "how
to use colours effectively", "how to use whitespace effectively" and
"basic typography" and not necessarily "making things go red using
Dreamweaver", "making text bigger with CSS").

I don't want to take an entire semester course at TAFE (at this stage),
but a weekend course would be good. Anyone know of anything?

-Mary