What to do with a Slideument

Earlier, I linked to Garr Reynolds commentary on the Hillary Clinton slideument. Rick Altman at the betterppt blog takes it a step further - redesigning Hillary's ppt. I've provided a screenshot showing the light table of his before and after slides; you can read more and download the ppt @ Hillary Clinton Commits Death by PowerPoint:

The photos used are unimaginative and mostly shoved into corners of slides, with no thought whatsoever given to how they might be more evocative and more emotional. The irony here is that there are some truly excellent photos available at the Clinton website. In about one hour, I was able to produce an entire makeover of this slide deck, relying even on low-res screen grabs of website photos.

Above all, this should not have been sent as slideware; it should have been a PDF document. Without a live person advocating these positions, the bulleted content is insufficient for fleshing out the argument. Given Clinton’s position as underdog, these arguments are too nuanced to be made by static bullet slides, especially poorly-designed ones. This deliverable should have been a completely-formatted document, created in InDesign or Xpress, or at a minimum, Publisher, with evocative photos, fully-formulated paragraphs, and integrated data charts.

The data and the argument is potentially compelling, but I score this as a missed opportunity from the New York Senator…