Less Is More

To make all of the above happen, we need a guiding principle. That principle is: Less Is More . These words have been attributed to one of the foremost architects and designers of the 20th century, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969), the father of the minimalist school. However, Less Is More existed before Mies was born, in Robert Browning's 1855 poem, "Andrea del Sarto".

Mies directed the influential Bauhaus School of Design in Germany in the 1930s, and then came to the United States, where he designed such sleek, classic structures as the bronze-and-glass Seagram Building in New York City.

Mies' famous Less Is More dictum became the guiding principle for many of the greatest designers of the past hundred years . Less Is More should be your guiding principle when you are creating your presentation graphics.

It is mine. It is mine after years of working in television, with access to the vast capabilities of professional graphic artists like my cousin Joel, operating in multi-million-dollar control rooms called "electronic paint pots." It is mine after almost 15 years of working with evolving generations of computer-based graphics programs, culminating in the XP version of Microsoft's PowerPoint, whose capabilities approach those of the professional electronic paint pots. It's good to have all those powerful tools available to me. But when designing graphics, I've learned to rely on the wisdom of Less Is More, and its corollary, When in doubt, leave it out .

An important benefit of a slide designed with this minimalist approach is that it serves as an instant prompt for the presenter: a visual mnemonic.