I finally took the time (long overdue) to read Garr Reynolds’ excellent book on presentation design, Presentation Zen. For those of you unfamiliar with Garr Reynolds, he is the proprietor of the like-named (and likewise excellent) blog on presentation design. I’m a great fan of his blog, so it should be no surprise [...]

Posted in Books, Presentations, Rants, eLearning Design 1 Comment »

OK, time to lay down some cold, hard truth. Anyone who has used both Apple Keynote and Microsoft PowerPoint for presentation work knows that Keynote absolutely, positively kicks PowerPoint’s trash to the curb when it comes to the quality of its visuals. Yes, PowerPoint has more widgets, gizmos, gadgets, and doodads, yet it [...]

Posted in Presentations, eLearning Design, eLearning Development Tools 1 Comment »

eQuixotic is not a blog for or about graphic designers. But it is a blog for eLearning designers who really need to think more like graphic designers.
I’m not a graphic designer by training, nor technically even by profession, though graphic design is what I hope to do in my next life. Design of [...]

Posted in Presentations, eLearning Design 3 Comments »

Common Craft are a Seattle-based husband and wife team (Lee & Sachi LeFever) with a distinct eLearning development style: they use hand-drawn paper cutouts and real live human fingers (!) for their instructional videos in lieu of fancy schmancy digital graphics and effects.Or, simply put:
We focus on simplicity, creativity and clear explanations to create videos [...]

Posted in Presentations, eLearning Hall of Fame 1 Comment »

In a previous post, I talked about the increasing push by companies to use eLearning to teach their customers how to use their products (An Educated Customer Is a Happy (and Loyal) Customer) via online tutorials, thus increasing sales and customer loyalty while reducing support costs.
In another post, I argued that eLearning is really no [...]

Posted in Evangelism, Presentations 2 Comments »

I am, you could say, a bit of a Steve Jobs fan. Yes, the guy is infamously arrogant and well-known to be a real tyrant to work for. No, I probably wouldn’t want to hang out with him for a weekend (lunch maybe). And I certainly don’t have thick enough skin to [...]

Posted in Apple, Evangelism, Presentations, eLearning Design No Comments »

Time for some blunt honesty here.  I promise I’ll be (mostly) polite.
If I see a Screen Bean in an eLearning course, presentation, or website in this, the year 2008, what the designer is clearly telling me, the viewer, is this:“I got nuthin’.”
Seriously people, let’s move on. Screen Beans were great OK 10 years [...]

Posted in Presentations, eLearning Design, eLearning Hall of Shame 6 Comments »

Here’s a fantastic free resource for eLearning development - a complete set of visually-polished icons for a standard PC keyboard to help elevate your eLearning to Beautiful status. These have been a great addition to some of my Camtasia and Articulate work.

Thanks Alan!Note: the website mentions you can get vector-based versions of these images [...]

Posted in Presentations, eLearning Development Tools No Comments »

Most of you (I hope) are familiar with the differences between raster images and vector images. If you are not, I strongly suggest you Google the subject and do a little reading. This is a fundamental concept of digital graphics that all eLearning developers should understand.
Continuing under the assumption you understand “raster” and [...]

Posted in Presentations, eLearning Development Tools No Comments »

Guy (I’m a huge fan!) interviews Garr (I’m a huge fan!) about his new book, Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery.

If you are an eLearning developer, you should religiously read Garr’s blog, Presentation Zen. I strongly believe that the concepts he discusses apply not only to presentations (PowerPoint/Keynote), but to [...]

Posted in Presentations, eLearning Design No Comments »