Finally!, a book that engages visual communication practice with cognitive

neuroscience and psychology research. Too often these areas live separately

and as a graphic designer professor, I find the Kosslyn's content invaluable.

As producers of visual communication, students should know what is going

on in the mind of their users. I plan on adding Clear and to the Point to my

course reading list.

This book is filled with very basic advice - much of which is very intiutive. For example, there are a lot of Do's and Dont's. Some of the do's and dont's:

dont vary bullets arbitrarily (one bullet is round, second is a ~, third is #, fourth is >).

dont present one giant list of items on a slide, do categorize them

dont make the subheading of your title slide more salient (visible, eye catching) than the heading. do make the heading more salient than subheading.

dont vary color in your presentation purely for decoration, do vary for emphasis

don't use underline, do use bold italics, etc.

This book is filled with probably 50 pages of such examples since each do and dont takes up a full page (sometimes two).

the 8 principles are also very simple things you would learn from watching a few well done presentations online such as talking at the right level, not trying to cram too much in people's heads at once, keeping focused on what you want people to get out of the presentation, etc.

If you are new to presentations, this is a good book for you. If you are familiar with giving presentations, you're better off trying a different book.

. However, "Clear and to the Point" is an excellent additional resource.