slide:ology
The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations
Featured customer reviews
slide:ology - "A must have book for any presentation.", November 07 2008
A Book Review – by Gregory West, SCUG Editor (www.scug.ca)
slide:ology
THE ART AND SCIENCE OF CREATING GREAT PRESENTATIONS
BY NANCY DUARTE
slide:ology
Nancy Duarte
Published by O'Reilly Media
ISBN-13: 978-0-596-52234-6
US/CAN $34.99
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596522346/index.html
There is nothing worse than a bad presentation. We have all, at one time or another, have been forced to sit and watch a slide show presentation, praying it will improve with time. Unfortunately, the odds are against us.
Sadly, these are professionals giving these presentations; so it must get better, right? Unfortunately, all-too-often these professional presentations go sour and chase instead of attract potential interests. What goes wrong? The answers are on each of the 274 pages of this book..
The introduction clearly points out that this book is not a manual for PowerPoint; it is a book is a "reference book" and it teaches the "why". The format is a coffee-table design, laying flat for easy reference, with large vivid colour pictures and designs throughout. The book begins giving you a brief history of presentations and why presentations are an important part of companies who "spend millions of dollars on advertising, marketing, and PR to attract and retain customers" and they have a need to create effect presentations to get their message out to prospective clients.
You will find several interesting Case Studies that Durate has created to show how some companies create "World Class Presentations" in simply terms, and quite frankly very easy to create. For example, one Case Study shows how Mark Templeton used communication and story telling "and his innate ability to think visually" in order to make it pay off.
There is a lot of behind-the-scenes psychology in creating presentations and Durate is ubiquitous in providing ongoing information. From the concept of "Creating Ideas, Not Slides", to "Thinking Like a Designer", Durate shows how simple it really is to create professional presentations that promote interest using "Visual Elements" and "Creating Movement". There is are amazing sections on colour psychology and text typesetting styles that go well beyond slide presentations that you may ever read twice as I did. I love the "Dissecting a Font" section where you learn the "personality" of various fonts and why they are used in various forms of presentations to make a point or grab your attention without you realizing it.
As you travel through this book you will look at a presentation with a new sense of vision. And if you have to do a presentation you will not make the mistakes that all-too-many professionals do each and every day throughout the world.
This book is a good read from cover to cover. It can be opened at any chapter where I guarantee you won't be able to put it back down. It is a great reference book to give you the insight and boost you may need to make your presentation work for you and your audience. I highly recommend this book to not only presenters but also viewers who just may become the best critics out there.
Gregory West is the Editor and Executive Member of the Sarnia Computer Users’ Group. He can be reached at prospector16(at)gmail.com (www.scug.ca).
This review is also published with APCUG and at http://gregorywest.wordpress.com/2008/11/07/slideology-by-nancy-duarte/
An engaging and informative book, November 05 2008
Worth your time and money, October 28 2008
Slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations, by Nancy Duarte is a book that will change the way you think about your presentations. Almost anybody who has ever had to deliver a presentation would benefit in some way from reading this book.
The structure of the book follows the process that you'll ideally use in the course of developing a presentation, from coming up with the presentation content itself to developing the slides. At every step of the way, Duarte explains not only how you should create your presentations (e.g. how graphs and charts should be presented), but also why your information should be presented that way. Following Duarte's advice results in a slide deck that supports and enhances your presentation, rather than having the deck detract from or (even worse) BE the presentation. The result is a presentation where there is actually a good reason for the existence and content of each slide.
You might be thinking that you're not a designer, so you won't be able to create a presentation as good as some of the examples highlighted in the book, but you don't need to be a designer to improve your presentations. The book does cover some of the fundamentals of design (color theory, fonts, etc.), and does so in an approachable way, so the non-designers in the crowd (which is most
of us) will get at least some information about design fundamentals to help you improve your presentations.
A tiny nitpick is that I would have liked to see even more examples of 'good' slides in the book - or even better, more examples of bad slides being turned into good ones. The case studies are great, but many of them are accompanied by an often full-page photo of the presenter. I'd have preferred to see that space given over to more images of the slides.
Overall, I found this to be an excellent book that will easily and immediately reward the time you spend reading it.
You gotta buy this one!, October 27 2008
If you use any slideware at all you HAVE to get this book!
If you don't know Nancy Duarte or anything about her, she was the one that brought fame to Al Gore's presentation on Global Warming. This book is mainly about the graphic look and feel of what a good presentation should be. This is the 3rd part of my trilogy on designing presentation. The first is Cliff Atkinson Beyond Bullet Point then Garr Reynolds Presentation Zen. These are 2 fantastic book on writing out your presentation "story" and with that story written it time to move to PowerPoint, this is where Nancy's book comes in. It is filled with creative insight on how visuals can be use to convey your story. It's just amazing how she is willing to freely share her insight with the design community. The book is well thought out, the example's are just amazing and it is causing me to totally re-evaluate everything I've thought about creating and using visuals in a presentaion.
So if you do any type of presentation, stop what you are doing and run and buy this book!.
David Holzemer
Multi-Media Specialist
Carnegie Mellon University
Not just for professional speakers, October 01 2008
As a software architect (and previously as a developer) I find I'm often doing impromptu "presentations" of information to business and technical people, and I believe that using the information in slide:ology will help me communicate my ideas clearly and effectively.
If you've ever sketched a diagram to explain how something works then you too can benefit from the ideas presented in slide:ology.
A must read!, September 22 2008
slide:ology:
The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations
by Nancy Duarte
As a professionally trained Educational Communications Specialist and former Graduate School professor, I read this book with skepticism. Nancy Duarte has capsulized all that I learned in a thirty plus year career communicating with the public and educational professionals. This is the book I should have written so many years ago. Chapter by chapter, one is reminded of the many aspects necessary for effective visual communications. Although the book concentrates on slideshows it's lessons are applicable to all forms of visual presentations. It should be read and reread by anyone responsible for group presentations.
Wow, what a bo:ok, September 15 2008
If you are a public speaker or have to give presentations as part of your job, you must read this book.
From the acknowledgments to the manifesto, you will be delighted by the contents and presentation.
This is a beautiful book to hold and read.
Hats off to Nancy Duarte (and her team).
Pay attention to Guy Kawasaki's advice: "now you have no excuse for your Long, Boring and USELESS Presentation".
Media reviews
"I’ve been begging Nancy for years to put her 20 years of wisdom and experience into print form, and she has delivered beyond all expectations with Slide:ology. Any presenter will savor this encyclopedia of slide design, filled with page after page of theory, principles, anecdotes, examples and real-world case studies. This is a complete design education condensed into a single book that you’ll keep by your laptop for years as a reference. Now that you have the secrets of Duarte Design at your fingertips, there’s no excuse to use the same old boring bullet points – it’s time to start unlocking the power of your own visual stories!"
-- Cliff Atkinson, Author, Beyond Bullet Points
"Slideology is a beautifully-designed, practical guide to creating visually effective presentations. While referencing the work that has gone one before, Nancy brings a fresh perspective to this inaugural effort. Previous authors have focused on developing great presentations through planning, organization, writing, and speaking skills, but none have focused on the effective use of visuals in presentations like this book. She provides a good balance between theory and application in a book filled with visual examples including before & after pictures, real-world case studies, and advice from some of the best presenters in the world. On top of everything, she seasons her perspective of visual thinking through presentations with just the right amount of humor. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to create effective, visual presentations."
-- Tom Crawford, CEO, VizThink
"“Now that Nancy has published this book, what’s your excuse for your long, boring, and useless presentations?” "
-- Guy Kawasaki, co-founder of Alltop and author of The Art of the Start
Read all reviews
By Nancy Duarte
August 2008
Pages: 294
ISBN 10: 0-596-52234-7 |
ISBN 13: 9780596522346
Press Release
(Average of 7 Customer Reviews)
Presentation software 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 offers practical approaches that combine conceptual thinking and inspirational design, with insightful case studies from the world's leading brands. Written by the President and CEO of Duarte Design, the firm that created the presentation for Al Gore's Oscar-winning film, An Inconvenient Truth.
Full 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:
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.
Featured customer reviews
slide:ology - "A must have book for any presentation.", November 07 2008
Rating:
Submitted by
Gregory West
[Respond | View]
A Book Review – by Gregory West, SCUG Editor (www.scug.ca)
slide:ology
THE ART AND SCIENCE OF CREATING GREAT PRESENTATIONS
BY NANCY DUARTE
slide:ology
Nancy Duarte
Published by O'Reilly Media
ISBN-13: 978-0-596-52234-6
US/CAN $34.99
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596522346/index.html
There is nothing worse than a bad presentation. We have all, at one time or another, have been forced to sit and watch a slide show presentation, praying it will improve with time. Unfortunately, the odds are against us.
Sadly, these are professionals giving these presentations; so it must get better, right? Unfortunately, all-too-often these professional presentations go sour and chase instead of attract potential interests. What goes wrong? The answers are on each of the 274 pages of this book..
The introduction clearly points out that this book is not a manual for PowerPoint; it is a book is a "reference book" and it teaches the "why". The format is a coffee-table design, laying flat for easy reference, with large vivid colour pictures and designs throughout. The book begins giving you a brief history of presentations and why presentations are an important part of companies who "spend millions of dollars on advertising, marketing, and PR to attract and retain customers" and they have a need to create effect presentations to get their message out to prospective clients.
You will find several interesting Case Studies that Durate has created to show how some companies create "World Class Presentations" in simply terms, and quite frankly very easy to create. For example, one Case Study shows how Mark Templeton used communication and story telling "and his innate ability to think visually" in order to make it pay off.
There is a lot of behind-the-scenes psychology in creating presentations and Durate is ubiquitous in providing ongoing information. From the concept of "Creating Ideas, Not Slides", to "Thinking Like a Designer", Durate shows how simple it really is to create professional presentations that promote interest using "Visual Elements" and "Creating Movement". There is are amazing sections on colour psychology and text typesetting styles that go well beyond slide presentations that you may ever read twice as I did. I love the "Dissecting a Font" section where you learn the "personality" of various fonts and why they are used in various forms of presentations to make a point or grab your attention without you realizing it.
As you travel through this book you will look at a presentation with a new sense of vision. And if you have to do a presentation you will not make the mistakes that all-too-many professionals do each and every day throughout the world.
This book is a good read from cover to cover. It can be opened at any chapter where I guarantee you won't be able to put it back down. It is a great reference book to give you the insight and boost you may need to make your presentation work for you and your audience. I highly recommend this book to not only presenters but also viewers who just may become the best critics out there.
Gregory West is the Editor and Executive Member of the Sarnia Computer Users’ Group. He can be reached at prospector16(at)gmail.com (www.scug.ca).
This review is also published with APCUG and at http://gregorywest.wordpress.com/2008/11/07/slideology-by-nancy-duarte/
An engaging and informative book, November 05 2008
Rating:
Submitted by
Mike Stok (Toronto Ruby User Group)
[Respond | View]
f you want a set of startegies and tactics to help you produce a better presentation, this is a really great book. It gives you tools to think about what an audience is looking for, and how you can effectively tell an engaging story to them.
If you choose to read the book from cover to cover then content unfolds logically. Should you later use the book as a reference then the sections stand by themselves. This could be the result of the author thinking carefully about the ways readers might approach the book, and how to make slide:ology useful to them.
The chapters which address various aspects of design are full of useful principles, specific examples of “before” and “after” slides, and things as mundane as the RGB triples for some of the palettes used as illustrations. This “help in depth” eases me into trying things out. The specific examples are presented in the context of more general principles, and there is plenty of variety in the examples.
I found it refreshing that someone was prepared to give a rough estimate of how long it can take to produce a presentation, and break it down into activities.
At a more visceral level I liked the book because I have been having fun slyly practicing drawing stick figures at the office, re-awakening a sense of fun in visual expression.
I found slide:ology an engaging and interesting book. It has shown me ways I can prepare and produce better presentations. These tools also give me a way to critically appreciate presentations I see.
Read the full review at http://www.trug.ca/2008/10/27/slideology/
Worth your time and money, October 28 2008
Rating:
Submitted by
Darren
[Respond | View]
Slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations, by Nancy Duarte is a book that will change the way you think about your presentations. Almost anybody who has ever had to deliver a presentation would benefit in some way from reading this book.
The structure of the book follows the process that you'll ideally use in the course of developing a presentation, from coming up with the presentation content itself to developing the slides. At every step of the way, Duarte explains not only how you should create your presentations (e.g. how graphs and charts should be presented), but also why your information should be presented that way. Following Duarte's advice results in a slide deck that supports and enhances your presentation, rather than having the deck detract from or (even worse) BE the presentation. The result is a presentation where there is actually a good reason for the existence and content of each slide.
You might be thinking that you're not a designer, so you won't be able to create a presentation as good as some of the examples highlighted in the book, but you don't need to be a designer to improve your presentations. The book does cover some of the fundamentals of design (color theory, fonts, etc.), and does so in an approachable way, so the non-designers in the crowd (which is most
of us) will get at least some information about design fundamentals to help you improve your presentations.
A tiny nitpick is that I would have liked to see even more examples of 'good' slides in the book - or even better, more examples of bad slides being turned into good ones. The case studies are great, but many of them are accompanied by an often full-page photo of the presenter. I'd have preferred to see that space given over to more images of the slides.
Overall, I found this to be an excellent book that will easily and immediately reward the time you spend reading it.
You gotta buy this one!, October 27 2008
Rating:
Submitted by
DHolzemer
[Respond | View]
If you use any slideware at all you HAVE to get this book!
If you don't know Nancy Duarte or anything about her, she was the one that brought fame to Al Gore's presentation on Global Warming. This book is mainly about the graphic look and feel of what a good presentation should be. This is the 3rd part of my trilogy on designing presentation. The first is Cliff Atkinson Beyond Bullet Point then Garr Reynolds Presentation Zen. These are 2 fantastic book on writing out your presentation "story" and with that story written it time to move to PowerPoint, this is where Nancy's book comes in. It is filled with creative insight on how visuals can be use to convey your story. It's just amazing how she is willing to freely share her insight with the design community. The book is well thought out, the example's are just amazing and it is causing me to totally re-evaluate everything I've thought about creating and using visuals in a presentaion.
So if you do any type of presentation, stop what you are doing and run and buy this book!.
David Holzemer
Multi-Media Specialist
Carnegie Mellon University
Not just for professional speakers, October 01 2008
Rating:
Submitted by
Burk Hufnagel
[Respond | View]
As a software architect (and previously as a developer) I find I'm often doing impromptu "presentations" of information to business and technical people, and I believe that using the information in slide:ology will help me communicate my ideas clearly and effectively.
If you've ever sketched a diagram to explain how something works then you too can benefit from the ideas presented in slide:ology.
A must read!, September 22 2008
Rating:
Submitted by
JFMelchior
[Respond | View]
slide:ology:
The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations
by Nancy Duarte
As a professionally trained Educational Communications Specialist and former Graduate School professor, I read this book with skepticism. Nancy Duarte has capsulized all that I learned in a thirty plus year career communicating with the public and educational professionals. This is the book I should have written so many years ago. Chapter by chapter, one is reminded of the many aspects necessary for effective visual communications. Although the book concentrates on slideshows it's lessons are applicable to all forms of visual presentations. It should be read and reread by anyone responsible for group presentations.
Wow, what a bo:ok, September 15 2008
Rating:
Submitted by
joshSVUG
[Respond | View]
If you are a public speaker or have to give presentations as part of your job, you must read this book.
From the acknowledgments to the manifesto, you will be delighted by the contents and presentation.
This is a beautiful book to hold and read.
Hats off to Nancy Duarte (and her team).
Pay attention to Guy Kawasaki's advice: "now you have no excuse for your Long, Boring and USELESS Presentation".
Media reviews
"I’ve been begging Nancy for years to put her 20 years of wisdom and experience into print form, and she has delivered beyond all expectations with Slide:ology. Any presenter will savor this encyclopedia of slide design, filled with page after page of theory, principles, anecdotes, examples and real-world case studies. This is a complete design education condensed into a single book that you’ll keep by your laptop for years as a reference. Now that you have the secrets of Duarte Design at your fingertips, there’s no excuse to use the same old boring bullet points – it’s time to start unlocking the power of your own visual stories!"
-- Cliff Atkinson, Author, Beyond Bullet Points
"Slideology is a beautifully-designed, practical guide to creating visually effective presentations. While referencing the work that has gone one before, Nancy brings a fresh perspective to this inaugural effort. Previous authors have focused on developing great presentations through planning, organization, writing, and speaking skills, but none have focused on the effective use of visuals in presentations like this book. She provides a good balance between theory and application in a book filled with visual examples including before & after pictures, real-world case studies, and advice from some of the best presenters in the world. On top of everything, she seasons her perspective of visual thinking through presentations with just the right amount of humor. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to create effective, visual presentations."
-- Tom Crawford, CEO, VizThink
"“Now that Nancy has published this book, what’s your excuse for your long, boring, and useless presentations?” "
-- Guy Kawasaki, co-founder of Alltop and author of The Art of the Start
Read all reviews
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"Any presenter will savor this encyclopedia of slide design, filled with page after page of theory, principles, anecdotes, examples and real-world case studies."
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