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

This book is a great book to inspire one to push beyond the mundane, and enter into an Artful
and more complete type of Presentation-- and it can be applied to any type of Presentation. I found the content to inspire me to create a unique and brilliant Presentation, not just a Presentation. This book is also concise, well constructed to easily navigate through the parts of particular interest, and it touches on "flashes of genious"-- certain examples of great work.
The inclusion of a woman's successful Presentation (the brain doctor) because of a conscious decision to use very few Slides points to this book as a Visionary book. It is not a 'how-to' book but a "think about this" type of book. It was also very beautifully laid out. The attention to every design detail was remarkable and it has become a book I recommend to everyone trying to understand the communicative concepts behind any type of Presentation-- from a business one to one more along the lines of theatre or spectacle-- because those are the Presentation of Ideas too-- albeit emotional ones. I call this an Art Book on presentations.FAUST

Working in a world that is increasingly aliterate demands the best control of communications possible, and this starts with the tools of the graphics designer.

Clean, fast, powerful, effective communication requires using the tools to address the unique subculture of your market niche, and your graphics design team has been collecting bits and pieces, here and there, giving you the best of what they have.

If they don't have this book, they don't have enough.

This one book places all of their bits and pieces in a context of graphical communications, as well as providing many more, very useful, bits and pieces of graphic design.

Skip all you were taught, unlearn what hasn't worked, and get this book, which encapsulates the keys to the code of effective graphic communications.

It's almost a cliche to complain about how most presentations are horrible. But fortunately there are a select few books out there that take you beyond the mechanics of creating a presentation. Nancy Duarte has one of those books that need to be read by every presenter... slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations. It's my hope that this book gets a wide reading by all who stand up in front of groups and convey a message.

Contents:
Introduction; Create a New Slide Ideology; Creating Ideas, Not Slides; Creating Diagrams; Displaying Data; Thinking Like a Designer; Arranging Elements; Using Visual Elements - Background, Color, and Text; Using Visual Elements - Images; Creating Movement; Governing with Templates; Interacting with Slides; Manifesto - The Five Theses of the Power of a Presentation; Reference; Index

Duarte leads a design firm that is responsible for shaping the message and images that define a company's message. In slide:ology, she distills down the important information they use to design slides and presentations that make an impact, both visually and emotionally. She starts with defining how presentations are meant to convey ideas, not slides. All too often, presenters use slides as a crutch to hide behind. If all the information is there, then they don't have to worry about forgetting anything. Conversely, they also aren't needed as part of the presentation, either. These text-heavy, multi-bulleted slides are really documents in disguise. They're meant to be printed off and read, not presented to a group. After the theory and concepts are presented, she gets into the mechanics of how those impact slides are created, everything from color and font selection to image use and placement. In many ways, the book is also an example of her work. Rather than pages and pages of text with standard images, the layout is designed to enhance the message and cement the concepts in the reader's mind. Although it feels like you're reading a work of literary art, you're also absorbing the message almost without effort. It's nearly impossible to come away from reading slide:ology without looking at presentations in the same way again.

Up to the point of reading slide:ology, I was convinced that Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds was the only absolute "must read" for presenters. I would now contend that slide:ology should be purchased and read at the same time. I've started to incorporate many of these ideas in my presentations, and it's made a major difference (positively, that is). You owe it to yourself, and especially your audience, to read slide:ology. You'll be happier with your efforts to communicate, and your audience will be MUCH happier listening to you present.

A very interesting book for people who uses to make presentations and want to do it different.
Very good graphics, many examples, Ideas, etc

Where to start?

Overall, this is probably one of the best books I've purchased for my own skills growth. I give the occasional presentation and I'm just blown away now that I review my previous slideshows having this book's information in my head.

For me, just the information found in Chapter 7 (of 12) was worth the price of the book. Don't know what Triadic or Tetradic color sampling are? You will when you're done reading. And the suggestions on the use of lighting an text feel common-sense now, but of course that's after reading this book.

The author includes a good mixture of Case Studies, with very simple examples from key companies and organizations that just hammer in the fact that there's so much to learn about proper slide design.

Add to this the discussion on the actual purposes of slideshows and I'm convinced that I can improve my presentations and make certain they fill the requirements of the audience and not my own.

Some random thoughts:

* Chapter 9 on Movement - short but sweet; I'm already trying to figure out how to incorporate some of these ideas into my slideshows.

* Chapter 4 on Data Presentation - another chapter that very well may be worth the price of the book. If you use graphs in your slideshows, this chapter will open your eyes to what we do right and wrong.

* Chapter 10 on Templates - Finally, some good advice on creating my own in-house standards that provide some consistency for my audience.

Overall, a 6-star book. The layout is easy on the eyes, the writing style is simple and relevant, and the examples are plenty and to the point. I wish I'd had this book in college and highly recommend it to any up-and-coming entrepreneurs who want to get attention. Great job, Nancy Duarte.