20th century modernity brought us the decoupling of design and design representation as well as a steep decline in the authority of expert knowledge. The wider public is allowed to participate in decisions and, therefore, ought to be enabled to decide in a rather educated fashion. Architects and urban planners are caught up in the middle. They have to convince their audience verbally—prospective customers, tenants, spin doctors and bystanders alike—that their unique design (as visually displayed on the wall) will be ultimately satisfactory not only for the duration of a short-term advertising campaign but also for a long-term project with significant impact on multiple aspects. What we can agree on: The successive mode of persuasive rhetoric and the momentous fascination with graphics at a glance. We ‘buy’ a verbal argument only at the conclusive end of the story while we are subjected to the visual allurement of the first glimpse: You never get a second chance to make a first good impression. I suggest public presentations as calculation of the overwhelming simultaneousness of information that is structured according to the succession of the potential verbal explanation irrespective of the presence of the authors. We show visually what we want to explain verbally. We illustrate explanations rather than display planning. The quest to extract information complexity in public presentations meets the current implementation of increasingly complex Building Information Modeling (BIM) systems.