PowerPoint tends to get a bad rap. You know, that whole “death by PowerPoint” thing. It probably isn’t what the marketing people at Microsoft are most fond of. But weak PowerPoints have much more to do with the user than with the platform. But what about alternatives – total breaks –…
I’m taking my normal in-person speaking engagements online and you can come. I’ll be presenting one 90-minute class per month and repeating this entire series every 4 months. You’ll even get a sneak peek of examples from my forthcoming book (don’t tell Sage). Here is the lineup: Reporting to be…
This year, the American Evaluation Association is loaded with a ton of great stuff. I’ll be speaking on the Potent Presentations Initiative and what makes great messaging, design, and delivery. I’m also really excited to see the closing session on Saturday, because AEA President Rodney Hopson is pulling together…
Earlier this summer we hitched a ride on the train to Chicago for a few days to enjoy that beautiful city before it turns blustery and cold for 6 months. As usual when traveling, walking around the city made me think of how it…
At this time last year I was putting the final touches on my dissertation manuscript format and preparing for my defense. I looked at the extent of graphic design use in evaluation reports. I gathered about 200 summative evaluation reports from the repository at Informal Science Education, trained…
No, not the fountain of youth. The font of truth. Wait, could there actually be a font that communicates truth? This little experiment explains that, yeah dudes, that might be the case. Back in July, Errol Morris conducted an experiment. He wrote, as usual, a column for the New York…
After 5+ years, which started as Michael Scriven’s assistant, I’m departing from The Evaluation Center at Western Michigan University on August 31 to accommodate the major increase in my consulting around data visualization and evaluation reporting. I began the tedious effort of cleaning out my drawers and came up the…
Ideal alignment is when everything on a page or slide lines up with something else. This sounds pretty simple, right? But there are a lot of implications to consider. First, let’s examine a weak layout. I drew in some red lines, based on the start and end of…
It’s time to talk about bleeding. Bleeding is a technique used by graphic designers in which the image extends all the way to (or even beyond) Â the edges of a page or slide. In the slide below, the image is not bleeding. The picture of the tractor is…
In 1993 two artists set out to make a data-driven painting. I’m not kidding. They contracted with a well respected research firm, ran a call center in the midwest, and used telephone interviews to gather opinions about the type of artistic content and composition people preferred. The poll used a…
