Bullet points get a bad rap but can be useful when used correctly.

To create a well-designed PowerPoint presentation, you must begin with a good foundation – the background. PowerPoint 2011 for the Mac features no less than 57 design templates. A search on google.com for “powerpoint slide background” returns a kaleidoscopic 1,710,000 images. Are any of these backgrounds useful in designing a presentation to be used at trial [...]

Over on the Atlantic website, James Fallows points to a good use of Google Earth to help visualize the surface area of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Using this utility, you can map the spill onto any city to see how far reaching it is (The utility requires the Google [...]

Alex Lundry delivers a crash course on familiar topics in information graphics, using Congressman John Boehner’s cluttered Healthcare Reform Chart as a jumping off point (language briefly NSFW): (via Andrew Sullivan)

A study published this summer (PDF) asserts that using animations in PowerPoint to control the rate of information on a slide may actually reduce comprehension by the audience. Even though the use of custom animation allows the introduction of new information incrementally the technique can adversely impact student learning experience when factual information is conveyed in the presentation.  Subjects shown [...]

Whent we are faced with a jury of non-scientists and the difficult task of teaching technical subject matter to them, we must switch off the cold light of science, light a warm fire and settle in to tell a story.

Consider the humble timeline. A trial graphic staple, it is often the first to be constructed. There are even computer applications devoted to the automatic creation of timelines. However, in spite of the widely held opinion that storytelling is the most powerful means of communication, we often fail to tell our story in the one [...]