Product Description

No matter where you are on the organizational ladder, the odds are high that you've delivered a high-stakes presentation to your peers, your boss, your customers, or the general public. Presentation software is one of the few tools that requires professionals to think visually on an almost daily basis. But unlike verbal skills, effective visual expression is not easy, natural, or actively taught in schools or business training programs. slide:ology fills that void.

Written by Nancy Duarte, President and CEO of Duarte Design, the firm that created the presentation for Al Gore's Oscar-winning film, An Inconvenient Truth, this book is full of practical approaches to visual story development that can be applied by anyone. The book combines conceptual thinking and inspirational design, with insightful case studies from the world's leading brands. With slide:ology you'll learn to:

• Connect with specific audiences
• Turn ideas into informative graphics
• Use sketching and diagramming techniques effectively
• Create graphics that enable audiences to process information easily
• Develop truly influential presentations
• Utilize presentation technology to your advantage

Millions of presentations and billions of slides have been produced -- and most of them miss the mark. slide:ology will challenge your traditional approach to creating slides by teaching you how to be a visual thinker. And it will help your career by creating momentum for your cause.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7367 in Books
• Published on: 2008-08-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 294 pages

About the Author
Principal of Duarte Design (http://www.duarte.com) since 1990, Nancy Duarte passionately pursues the presentation development and design niche. One of the largest design firms in Silicon Valley and listed as a top woman-owned business in the area, Duarte Design is one of the few agencies in the world focused solely on presentations, whether they are delivered in person, online or via mobile device. Nancy's twenty years of experience working with global companies and thought leaders has influenced the perception of some of the world's most valuable brands and many of humanity's common causes.

Customer Reviews

The cure for death by PowerPoint
Comparing favourably with Presentation Zen Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery (Voices That Matter) this book is a superb guide to improving your presentations. Beautifully designed and presented (but would you expect anything less) the book takes a holistic view of presentation planning, design and delivery.

The author is the founder of her own presentation design business with a client list that reads like a who's who of the business world. Accordingly, samples of some of these presentations are included in the book.

Aside from practical pointers, this book will serve as an inspiration to presentation creators everywhere!

All users of presentation software should read this!
This is indispensable reading for anyone who has to communicate using presentations and PowerPoint (or Keynote or Impress or whatever). Nancy Duarte lays out what she has learned from many years of experience producing professional presentations for the likes of ex VP Al Gore. Her "how to" approach works very well indeed. For example, she doesn't just say "make use of contrast" but shows five different patterns for using contrast in practice, illustrated with simple diagrams depicting contrasts in size, shape, shade, colour and proximity. This book makes advanced slide design accessible to anyone - if you present to other people, you must read this book!

Emperor's New Old Clothes
I had high hopes for this book. It looks very nice. It has the right nods to Tufte early on. But...

But the true content is very thin, includes a load of chart junk (the anti-Tufte - I guess the true cue is in the title, this is a PowerPoint book) and page after page of abstract diagrams demonstrating "flow" - much like the woeful second half of "Say it with Charts" which is about 50 pages of arrows.

Very very disappointing indeed.