Methods of Teaching Business Communication

I am amazed at how many people draw incorrect conclusions by confusing absolute and relative values. One example is the recent survey of religious faith in Belgium published in Le Soir. A better visual representation would help.

Every picture tells a story, according to the saying (and a song by Rod Stewart). Does it, really? Certainly not on its own (or at least not unambiguously), but a few well-chosen words can help.

Since the same language can be spoken in several countries and conversely several languages spoken in the same country, I have never understood why Web designers would choose to use country flags as a way to represent languages visually.

A recent seminar announcement about “Service Design” reminded me of why consultant babble does not rhyme with effective communication: because of vagueness, neologisms, and hype. But perhaps I should give it a try in my own marketing? ;–)

One reason why we still see so many appalling presentations is that too many audience members put up with them. Fortunately, there is hope: newspeople are starting to complain openly about business presentations they consider torture.

Are the titles of your slides phrased as a sentence? If not, they are most likely not getting the message across. The power of an assertion is in its verb.

The Programme rental terms & conditions for the Hertz #1 Club Gold are doing everything possible to make me not want to read them: 72 pages of typical legal copy in one of the worst page layout I have seen lately.

While in Riga to run two workshops at the University of Latvia, I recognized three typical issues about pictorial signs, which are certainly worth a reminder.

Interestingly, the criticized use of the word man to designate a human of either sex as opposed to, specifically, a male one has got a direct, language-independent graphical equivalent, as illustrated by signs at the new Terminal 1 of Barcelona airport.

The delightful YouTube video of Microsoft redesigning the iPod package exemplifies the widespread phobia of emptiness—on the part of the communicators, not of the audience.