Is it Time to Ditch PowerPoint?

I enjoy reviewing the Presentation Zen blog. It is kept up by blogger Garr Reynolds and covers issues related to professional presentation design.

Yesterday he posted an article called, "Is it finally time to ditch PowerPoint?" It would be a good read by any pastor or leader who teaches regularly or on occasion. I was glad to read his balanced approach. Lately there has been several articles by professionals who state that you should completely eliminate all background visuals during any presentation. I'm sure for someone like Rudy Guiliani or Andy Stanley or Mark Beeson...that doesn't phase them at all. They have the communication ability to be able to command a crowd and keep their attention without any additional support.

But for someone like me, it makes me break out in a thick sweat. I need all the help I can get, so I rely on visuals to help me communicate.

In his blog entry, Garr is saying that we rely on PowerPoint (or KeyNote or whatever) too much to communicate the same exact text that we are saying. He says,

"It's long past time that we realized that putting the same information on a slide that is coming out of our mouths usually does not help--in fact usually hurts our message."

This confirms the direction we've been taking at Granger. We don't eliminate the visuals. Rather, guys like Dustin Maust, Adam Tarwacki and Ben Sanders have been helping us use the backgrounds as artistic expressions instead of just a repeat of information.