Tom Asacker, marketing guru and author of A Clear Eye for Branding, has just posted one of the best and most clear-headed articles on branding I have read in a while - uncommon common sense at its best. It's called The Remarkable Chimera.
The article itself says nothing directly about presentation design, but it says a lot about hype and why it can be misleading, and therefore why you should avoid it. And I think that lesson does apply to designing presentations.