I’ve been doing a lot of design reading lately. It started when I was in San Jose and would go to the library to browse books for inspiration. Now I can’t get enough.

A couple weeks ago, I read the comprehensive Meggs’ History of Graphic Design. I never got a formal design education, so I wanted to get a solid foundation and put things in perspective historically. It was interesting to see which designs have stood the test of time and which designs look dated, in a bad way.

I also checked out a couple of information design books from the public library, Envisioning Information and Beautiful Evidence by Edward R. Tufte. He’s a big proponent of content. If the numbers are boring, then you’ve got the wrong numbers. And clutter is a failure of design, not an attribute of information; but, visual problems shouldn’t be fixed by sacrificing the resolution of the content.

One chapter from Beautiful Evidence really got to me in particular. It talked about the inherent problems of PowerPoint presentations — good for the confidence of bad presenters, but horrible as a means of communicating something to an audience.

It’s just that people see, think, and read all the time at intensities greater than watching bulleted list items appear one by one on slide sequences. I only ever learned by (1) reading the textbook or (2) practicing or doing.

The issue is that PowerPoint presentations can be used as a substitute for real thought. Smatterings of somewhat related words and phrases are certainly easier than writing full sentences.

Time is rarely left for deep thought, which is required for meaningful communication.