The good, the bad and the ugly

It was interesting to see the many different approaches that my fellow group mates took in order to convey their messages. I realized how essential it was to explain what the string of sentences meant. A lot of our slides lost meaning because of trying to make it in a point form in order to make the slides look less cluttered. Contexts are semiotic and can be differently read. Thus if not explained, it can be misunderstood (Schirato 2000, pg.50).

I very much enjoyed the presenters that were less-wordy in their slides. It was hard to keep up and frankly quite painful to the eyes to see the slides filled to the brim with words. I personally believe that presentations are meant to explain and summarize the main points in order for easier absorption. Thus, there will be no need to string words together to form long sentences which would in return backfire because the presenter would more often than not read word for word from the slides.

This could also be solved by the usage of images to illustrate a point, rather than using language. Afterall, not everything that can be realized in language can be realized by the means of images and vice versa (Kress & Van Leuwen pg.19). Therefore, a mixture of both would be great in terms of easier absorbtion. According to Graham (2006) having too much words in the slides will end up in a downhill spiral wherein the presentation goes from bad to worst because as the presenter reads from the slides, the lack of eye contact and poor voice projection leads the audience astray into their own worlds and ultimately loose interest in the presentation. Other than that, the use of language was something else that I noticed. Some of the presenters were too technical to the point that I wasn’t able to keep up. I reckon that they had forgotten who their audience was and the short attention span of the target audience. This was evident in the slides with technical terms.

Another interesting observation I made was based on the choice templates used for the slides. There were a select few presenters that had not taken into account the design principles into their slides. The cluttered layout and color choices of the template design seen in some of the slides have directly contributed to an undesired reading path (Oakley pg.300). In simple terms, instead of reading the important points or the slides, the audience was drawn to the overpowering templates.

References
1. Graham, R. 2006 The Windows of The Soul: Mastering the Art of Eye Contact, viewed 22 September 2009, http://www.grahamcomm.net/articles_05.html

2. Kress. G & Van Leeuwen, T. 2006, The Semiotoc Landscape: Language and Visual Communication

3. Oakley, Todd 2005, ‘Implied Narratives In Medical Practice,’ in Language & Literature, vol. 14. 14, no. 3, p.295-310. (UNISA electronic library)

4. Schirato, Tony & Yell, Susan, ‘Chapter 5: Framing contexts,’ in Communication and cultural literacy: an introduction.