The book is very visual, giving hundreds of examples of both good and bad Powerpoint design. Garr is of the “less is more” school of thought and he shows you how to turn horrific clip-art bullet point laden disasters into slick, to the point and punchy presentations that would make Steve Jobs proud.

Garr also touches on some aspects of Zen (of which he is very fond) and how it applies to the delivery and preparation of presentations. Be prepared for a bit of a Japanese lesson when reading about some of the concepts.

He is sympathetic with the current nightmare of slideshows shown in almost every lecture theatre and boardroom in the country, blaming slideware (Powerpoint, Keynote) for “guiding users toward presenting in outline form with subject titles and bullet points grouped under each topic heading” – basically the usual bullet point snoozes we have to endure every day. I really wish that this was compulsory reading for University lecturers.

Look at this slide from a lecture I was in today – I actually could not read the text from my seat in the room:

By quickly redesigning the slide based on the principles of Presentation Zen (in Powerpoint 2007), I get the following slide:

You might be wondering where all the information has gone – it is however the presenter’s job to present the information by speaking and explaining each point clearly and concisely, not reading from a slide. Streams of text copy and pasted from the net need to be in a seperate handout. The “watermarking” at the bottom of the slide is equally useless.

Teachers, please buy this book and start delivering engaging presentations that encourage students to come to the lecture. 5 people came to the class today – it started with 50. Engaging presentations will also teach the kids more!