Customer Reviews

Visual Literacy: Learn to See, See to Learn

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This book establishes a bold new frontier in our understanding of what it means to see. Dr. Burmark, long renowned as a leader in powerful presentations, here puts in writing -- and, of couse, a wealth of intriguing images -- how and why we interpret what we see. With a graceful, engaging style, she covers the history of visuals and how we came to this age of images. She explores the power of color in a beautifully presented color section of the book. Her section on effective use of imagery in computer presentations once again raises the bar on the whole field -- hopefully, we'll see fewer and fewer text-based presentations that use the screen only as a giant teleprompter. The book is filled with humor and wit; this is a fun, entertaining read! It's also one of the most useful and informative books I've come across in a very long time, with plentiful references to resources and materials. ...

Visual Literacy is a great book for novice to expert teachers. It provides information about appropriate fonts to use in teacher-created materials, using color in the classroom based on research, how to create a visually pleasing classroom from the door to the walls, etc. I recommend this book to you if you want to learn how to use visuals effectively with your students. It will change how you teach and how much they learn!

It's hard to accept Lynell Burmark as an authority on the subject of visual literacy and powerful presentations when the book itself is the least visually interesting book I think I've ever seen.

There's a grand total of 6 pages with color illustration in this 115 page book (that's 5% of the book). Ironically, the chapter advocating the use of color is followed by 71 pages (the remainder of the book) with not a single spot of color.

At one point in an explanation of PowerPoint presentations, the author explains that an illustration is provided "so you can savor the diagonal lines (in the original, deep green) strobing against the background (in the original, chartreuse green)". The accompanying illustration, which one might expect to see in chartreuse and deep green, is grey-on-grey. So the message about the horrible strobing green-on-chartreuse PowerPoint background is meant to be supported by that two inch by two inch grey-on-grey illustration? Really?

In addition to the problems with the illustrations, there is the problem of extremely boring font and layout. While the author states that "I rarely drop below 12-point text out of respect for readers with bifocals", her entire book (excepting headings) appears to be in 10 point (possibly 11) Times font. It looks like the book was originally a Word document template, complete with clip art black and white photos, which was bound as a book because it was just a bit too thick for a staple.

I'm really, really, disappointed. I was expecting at the very least some good modeling. Lynell Burmark, unfortunately, talks the talk but doesn't walk the walk in this book. If you're looking for a book on powerful visual presentations, colorfully illustrated, look elsewhere.