Some years ago I took a seminar with communication guru Edwin Tufte. He concluded his seminar on communication and design with a film of a magician’s performance. The short film was a clever and effective way to demonstrate some of the principles of how the brain “sees” and interprets “information.” More specifically, it demonstrated how understanding these principles of perception, and applying them for their purpose, magicians are able to fool the brain through intentional misdirection, deception, and obfuscation.

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I’m a Powerpoint presenter. In fact, it’s gotten so I can hardly conceive of doing a presentation without a remote slide clicker in my hand. Like any communication tool and media, Powerpoint is merely one way to do it. Use it well and your communication is effective. Use it poorly and it’s no better than a flip chart or chalk and blackboard. I spend as much time planning the design and pedagogy of a presentation as I do on the content. The fact is, the medium needs to complement the content.

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A friend asked me how I prepare my speaker notes for Powerpoint presentations. He saw that my speaker notes had the slide images on one side of the page with the corresponding notes on the other (with about four slide images to the page). He was not satisfied with the default Powerpoint printouts that came out with one huge slide image on the top half of the page and the notes on the bottom half of the page. Beside using up a lot of printer ink, it required him to flip a page for each slide.

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I’ve been invited to write a magazine article on artistic interpretations of biblical texts. I enthusiastically accepted the invitation from the editor. Given my lifelong interest in art in general, and religious art in particular, and the fact that I’ve never written (as well as I can recall) anything along these lines made the novelty attractive.

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