[btilly]

The opinion of the article's author is summarized by ths paragraph:

Which started me thinking about the 5 Powerpoint slides we see in every pitch deck. Sure, the slides all look different – different colors, bar charts, pie charts, line graphs. But, basically, they tell the same story. So if and when you use these slides, use them at your own risk – because we’ve seen them before!

Incidentally a great book to teach people how to create useful pictures (both for clarifying your thinking and for presenting) is The Back of the Napkin. Be warned that it it helps you communicate your message effectively, but it does nothing to help your message be more believable.

The book contains an ironic example of this, by telling the story of a fictional company named SAX Inc. He does a very good job of communicating his thinking about this company, its problems, and what it should do. However my knowledge of software development tells me that the plan he came up with has major pitfalls he is not aware of.