David Byrne of Talking Heads has become an unlikely advocate of PowerPoint as a creative tool for getting your ideas across.

Now established beyond the popular music world into writing, theatre and film, he also produces art with a .PPT file extension!

Having thought it a limited and ‘corporate’ tool to start with, experimentation has enabled him to create rich and interactive images.

So maybe it’s time to take a stand against the backlash on PowerPoint slideware (or Keynote or whatever) which has been going on for a couple of years at least.

Why do so many people rush to join the condemnation of an efficient tool for conveying complex ideas? Why not also have a backlash against the novel in book form? After all, that’s another highly formulaic medium where information is carried in a fundamentally limited way – using only the power of narrative – and it has many drawbacks.

There are rubbish novelists as well as great ones (try comparing Charles Dickens, Jackie Collins, Leo Tolstoy, Jody Picoult, Alasdair Gray, Tomas Hardy and Honore de Balzac).

As well as those who regularly bore or beffudle us with endless dreadful slides there are those who influence and inspire with pace and passion. TED.com and Pecha Kucha have plenty of examples and we all know people who are good (or even great) exponents of the medium.

Having the potential to use software (as with a pen or a paint brush) should be seen as a help not a hindrance. Like David Byrne, we should want to make the most of our chance to communicate with others and take the effort to produce great work.

Tags: art, communication, innovation