| | |  | Business & Culture | Home » » slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations | | | | | | | 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.
| | | Features: | |
• ISBN13: 9780596522346
• Condition: New
• Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
| | | Product Details: | | | Author:
| Nancy Duarte | | Paperback:
| 296 pages | | Publisher:
| O'Reilly Media | | Publication Date:
| August 12, 2008 | | Language:
| English | | ISBN:
| 0596522347 | | Package Length:
| 9.0 inches | | Package Width:
| 8.9 inches | | Package Height:
| 0.7 inches | | Package Weight:
| 1.6 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 92 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
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 Highly Informative - Overkill for Most PresentationsJul 24, 2010
If you're an "Al Gore level" presenter assigned to knock your audience dead with an elaborate slide presentation, complete with all the bells and whistles imaginable; this book is definitely for you.
Nancy Duarte's highly informative, step-by-step guide to producing and executing elaborate slide presentations is extremely powerful; perhaps too powerful for most applications. For the typical, slightly informal, "quick and simple strategy", this book, which is about 270 pages, is probably 200 pages too long. There's a lot of material in here; no doubt, but for most practical purposes, there's a lot of "skimming" to be done, to cut to the chase. That's not really a problem, I suppose. After all, it's better to have access to all this information, to be prepared for something really collosal in scope and importance. The earlier reference to Al Gore is my tongue in cheek observation to the book's likely amount of overkill. For the vast majority of presentations - slide or otherwise - a much simpler approach is advisable.
However, this book is beautifully crafted with remarkable attention to detail and visual impact. It may be more than anyone will ever need to prepare for any possible presentation imaginable, so this may wind up on more coffee tables than conference tables throughout corporate America. That's not necessarily such a bad thing, unless the struggling business is operating on tight margins, where every penny spent has to be relentlessly scrutinized. In that case, they may need to leave this tome alone.
 Really good bookJul 20, 2010
I've been on a quest to find the best books to guide me in great design of the PowerPoint presenatations I prepare for our company. I've read some pretty terrible books, all telling me how to use the best clip art or guiding me in the mechanics of WordArt, etc. Dreadful! I finally came across Slideology and the Presentation Zen books by Garr Reynolds, and I enjoyed them all three immensely. As far as having "advertisements" for other companies in the book (as one poster said), I found these to be more of real life examples, not advertisements. I enjoy seeing how top companies market themselves in their presentations. My plan is to revamp our corporate presentations using Duarte's design methods to show how much better our presentations can be. If your intention is to learn to use all of the transitions and other tools in PowerPoint, this is not your book. If you want to learn how to design a presentation that looks classy and will grab the attention of your audience, this IS your book.
Wow... actual information you can use!Jul 16, 2010
I browsed through 4 presentation books and this is only one needed. So very many outstanding examples.
Great Practical GuideJun 26, 2010
This is a great practical guide on developing better presentations. It covers all aspects of the process from developing the right messages to story boarding to the use of space on the final slides. All of the concepts brought forth are clear and can be implemented if you want to develop a high quality presentation.
On a personal note; I despise sitting through a pitch that basically has the speaker's presentation all typed out in bullets - drives me nuts. If that is what your presentations look like, READ THIS BOOK and start to improve your presentations today.
A Better Way of Approaching Presentations...May 31, 2010
PowerPoint is utilized so poorly so often. Slide:ology (in the spirit of Garr Reynolds wonderful books "Presentation Zen" and his more recent "Presentation Zen Design") helps provide a much more sophisticated and effective framework for how and when to use PowerPoint to its maximum potential. Not for the casual PowerPoint user, it suggests the truly symbiotic relationshp between form and content. It also suggests a critical focus on ideas and genuine persuasion - not just bullet points and information exchange. It allows you to develop your presentations with a whole new frame of mind and purpose. I enthusiastically recommend Nancy Duarte's approach and sage advice.
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