» slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations

slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations Reviews

Customer Rating:
Summary: Do Presentations the Right Way: To Share Ideas
Comment: Nancy Duarte, author of slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations has a wealth of resources on her Web site including articles, a blog, and extended content from her book. She cleverly adds a www symbol on some pages in the book. This sends a signal to check the book's companion site for extended content.

This great approach works well because it's visual with the green www taking little space. Thus, you don't feel like the book wastes any space to point you away from the book's pages. Some people don't care to go online -- they want their entire book within the book's pages. So it won't bother this audience.

A useful book companion site also helps market the book to those who don't have it. If they like what they see, they'll want the rest of it. Smart authors balance the print and online resource to avoid taking away from the experience of the print edition and providing bonus material that would not work in the book (videos of the presentation and downloadable PowerPoint files) while giving just enough information to those who don't own the book... yet.

Duarte refers to Sky McCloud's dynamic presentation containing 200 slides that she shows in eight minutes. Her book site includes her full presentation -- which you can't capture in the book. As a deaf person, I couldn't hear what she said. That girl's slides captivate me the whole time as they almost tell a story on their own.

What I like about these PowerPoint files is the site shows them like a movie. It also helps to watch the presentation in full first and then download the file to see its individual slides and how to make it work. Duarte provides the links referenced in the book so readers can click instead of type them.

The slick and colorful book shows how to create effective, intriguing, and visual presentations from the beginning of the process where you ask questions to know your audience better. It works through finding inspiration and coming up with the initial ideas and design.

slide:ology helps those who know all the tricks of PowerPoint, but struggle with the visual aspects of the presentation -- the art and design part. That's me. I'm a right-brain thinker who tells it like it is.

I struggle when it comes to creating and showing my thoughts with visuals. It's like when I tried to be a web designer. I knew how to do HTML, CSS, and create a site. But it was flat, lifeless, and boring.

This book blends PowerPoint and information visualization. Such visuals help tell the story. So the book covers space, typography, delivery, diagrams, color, animation, design value, and more.

This won't teach you how to use PowerPoint. Plenty of books covering that exist already. Instead, Duarte focuses on helping you tell your story in a dramatic and visually appealing way. You won't have to resort to cliché images anymore.

Case studies appear throughout the book between creativity and design discussions. Some zoom in on a specific feature of a real presentation while others share expertise from talented speakers and executives of organizations ranging from Cisco to a church pastor.

After reading slide:ology, I believe I can step up my presentations from a design perspective. I'm a pro when it comes to text, but visuals... kaput. Since I can easily create charts, it won't take much to make them more effective with the tips from the book. I'm in no hurry to do a presentation and test out what I've learned.

The book is easy to read and reference as it uses a lot of pictures and slides. Although a lot of the text uses too small of a font size -- very surprising considering the discussion on font size.

---

Customer Rating:
Summary: 100% practical!
Comment: The book is so packed with practical and pragmatic tips, it's usefull as soon as you open it. Great format to keep browsing through to find inspiration and check how you are doing on your slide deck while you work on it. Thanks for sharing the results of so many years of experience and expertise, Nancy!

---

Customer Rating:
Summary: A guide to using presentation software for maximum effectiveness and eye-popping presentations
Comment: No business library should be without SLIDE:OLOGY, a guide to using presentation software for maximum effectiveness and eye-popping presentations. Skillful visual presentations can make or break a report or business; here, the Principal of Duarte Design offers concrete approaches to visual story development, blending conceptual thinking with case studies from leading brands. From creating graphics to help listeners visualize more effectively to turning ideas into graphics and using diagramming techniques, this book challenges conventional approaches to using slides and teaches the foundations of visual thinking.

---

Customer Rating:
Summary: I Hate Powerpoint, but Love This Book
Comment: Powerpoint sucks. However, it's pretty tough to _not_ include a Powerpoint presentation if you're trying to convince someone that's used to Powerpoint. Slide:ology leaves irritating presentations behind.

Great stuff.

---

Customer Rating:
Summary: Not for causal but serious presenter
Comment: If you are finding an advanced book for presentation skills and slide design, you should love this one!

If you are finding a cookbook or a step-by-step instruction of how to build a powerpoint, you should not read this!

It is for advanced learner who really want to put design into presentation and slideshow. It is about a style and art rather than a production of a presentation file.

I recommend you reading this with these two...
Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery (Voices That Matter)
Help with high impact presentations

---

More Reviews for slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations