See the deck here.
Strengths
Content
This deck has one clear objective– to give you information about the 2012 Presidential candidates– and it achieves that objective cleanly and crisply, as promised in the title. If you didn’t know much about the candidates prior to seeing this presentation, you will know significantly more when you’re done. The presentation has a clearly established purpose, and regardless of any weaknesses, it is an effective overall because it disseminates accurate information simply.
Citations
Maps of World does a masterful job at including citations to support information used in the deck. This simple inclusion (one slide full of citations at the end) does wonders to strengthen the credibility of the deck, particularly because political material is notoriously contentious.
Weaknesses
Infographic?
The deck bills itself as an infographic, but it’s more like a list of facts than an infographic. By definition, infographics “present complex information quickly and clearly,” and while the deck does present information quickly and clearly, it’s not complex information, but rather information that’s pretty prosaic and well-known. A minor detail, to be sure, but one that’s worth mentioning considering how frequently the word “infographic” is misused.
Visuals
Overall, the deck is too busy with visuals. It would have been less so if the designer forwent the icons denoting different categories, i.e. pictures of the candidate’s dogs, sons, daughters, etc. A simple fix for this busy design would be to break the information out into multiple slides. In that case, the icon visuals could have been much larger, complimenting the information on the slide more effectively.
Creativity
Overall, we would have liked to see more creativity in this deck, particularly with the career highlights slides. The boxes seem arbitrary, and again the icons are too small to be effective and simply busy the slide. Perhaps they could have used a timeline to disseminate the information or broken down the information into multiple slides.
In Summation
Take on the whole, Maps of World’s presentation is effective in its clarity and simplicity. The design could have been more creative, but the deck achieves it’s main purpose, which is the most important element of a presentation.
What are your thoughts? Tell us in the comments section below!
