Trap. The combination of the genres of trance and rap usually through sound mixing and editing, has become a staple of parties and festival shows. They share similar use of synth, heavy base and spoken words to create music.
When we talked in class about usability and the internet, it sounded like the conclusion as to what makes a usable website is simplicity. Creating a website to serve a very obvious purpose is the key to usability.
Every day we are faced with multiple typefaces: the good, the bad and the ugly. Some help us to read faster and more clearly, some to invoke a specific feeling or emotion, all the while persuading us to do something (or buy something).
... and how clashing implications continue to shape our reactions to these colors.

Depending on the region and cultural upbringing, one may have different connotations associated with the colors black, white, and red.
When talking about the ethics and rhetoric of data displays in class, I brought up the example of geographic information system (GIS) and their technique of interpolation.
"The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint" makes the assertion that:

The core ideas of teaching- explanation, reasoning, finding

things out, questioning, content, evidence, credible authority not patronizing

authoritarianism-are contrary to the cognitive style of PowerPoint.
When I first pulled out Tufte's packet on Power Point, it looked like one of the most boring texts on the planet. 30 pages on the style of Power Point? But as I read, I started to see his point and even found myself laughing at certain parts (talking about the “stupefied audience”).

Just look at all the boxes you can fill with stuff!
Maybe it's just me, but as I read Tufte's "The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint," I couldn't help but feel that it was directed at me, especially between the ages of eleven and fifteen.  This feeling of guilt grew even more as I watched Davits' pecha-kucha on pecha-kuchas, and remember growing up with PowerPoint.  I clearly recall being astounded at all of the tricks it could do, only to become disillusioned with each of them, one by one.  Tufte's disapproval of the "abuse" PowerPoint performs on content is legitimate, and I stand guilty as charged.

I have to admit that I did love PowerPoint at first.  When they added the letter-by-letter animations,  I was still in middle school, and I couldn't wait to use them. I thought they looked really cool until I watched my slideshow just once and couldn't even sit through it myself.  Animations, once the most exciting thing on the screen, were just distractions that lost the audience's favor (and quickly).
  
Is it 1? Or just under 1?  Maybe 0.98 New Nations?
An even harder lesson to learn was appropriate information density, or managing clutter, a lesson PowerPoint certainly does not seem to be aware of (see image at top right).  Tufte's advice on data-to-ink ratios would have been invaluable in this area, as would the six lines per slide, six words per line guideline.  However, I'm not sure that Tufte is age-appropriate for most students that are being introduced to PowerPoint.  For such a group, I feel that the now-global pecha-kucha presentations would be more suitable to show them the ropes, as far as effective information presentation is concerned.


The real trouble with class PowerPoint presentations came later, as we got to high school.  Our projects became more and more complex, so more people would stand there and read long blocks of text directly off of the screen.  Tufte's book does not address this issue quite as well as the rigid format of pecha-kucha presentations does.  I can remember many past projects with a time or slide limit (nobody had considered both), which often drove students crazy, either trying to cram their slides with information or rehearsing their slides over and over to nail a time limit.  The turmoils of middle and high school presentations may be averted with pecha-kuchas, but Tufte's core idea of being true to your content must come into play at some point in the education process.
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