Resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences is the second book from presentation superhero Nancy Duarte.
It is also the second book of hers which I strongly recommend you read — immediately.
This article is the latest of a series of public speaking book reviews here on Six Minutes.
Presenters, teachers, and students all resist design-centered slide design on the basis of a perceived lack of time. Since I know that the visually-driven, Zen approach works, I am not deterred by this resistance; instead, I use one simple phrase to help cultivate strong design from presenters whose time is limited.
If you want to create beautiful, impactful, and audience-centered slides but don’t have 20 hours or more to devote to designing a slide deck, just remember the acronym C-R-A-P *, and create slides that embody strong Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, and Proximity.
Yesterday, Alex Rister introduced five habits that college students need to purge.
In this article, she continues with five more negative habits.
College students come into my classroom not only with a flurry of fears and insecurities, but also with baggage in the form of bad presentation habits they have developed over the years.
My students’ bad habits didn’t happen overnight. These habits develop through years and years of watching terrible presentations. While most of us can recognize a terrible presentation, we don’t yet have the tools to make our own presentations great.
In a class called Professional Communication and Presentation, I teach my students how to break their bad habits. These lessons apply to all presenters: teachers, conference presenters, business executives… anyone who has a speech to deliver. Read on to see how you can un-learn these habits, too!
Garr Reynolds, Nancy Duarte, and Cliff Atkinson are the authors of three hugely popular books on presentation design in the last five years.
What else do all three have in common? They all point to Richard E Mayer’s Multimedia Learning as recommended reading for presentation design.
And I agree.
This article is the latest of a series of public speaking book reviews here on Six Minutes.
An open letter to the PowerPoint programming team with public speaking inspired ideas for future PowerPoint features…
Dear PowerPoint Programmers:
Thank you for creating such a wonderful presentation aid. PowerPoint is like a Swiss Army knife in a presenter’s visual aid toolbox. It is a tool with tremendous power.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of people cannot control this power. Hour after hour, dreaded presentation after dreaded presentation, I continue to be amazed at the horrible presentations that speakers are able to create with PowerPoint at the core.
I am a Bert Decker fan. I subscribe to his blog and learn from him often. I’ve got his books on my wishlist.
But, after reading his “Top Ten Best (and Worst) Communicators of 2008” list, I’m confused — how did he get it wrong?
Last week, I reviewed slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations, an exciting new book destined to become a classic reference for presentation skills.
slide:ology is the product of Nancy Duarte and her design team at Duarte Design (the firm who designed visuals for Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth).
I admire Nancy’s creative approach to business (check out the “organization” tab on the Duarte site) as much as the expertise she shares in slide:ology (the book) and slide:ology (the blog).
For these reasons, I’m delighted to feature Nancy in the first of an exciting new series here on Six Minutes: interviews revealing insights from fascinating individuals in and around the speaking industry.
If you want to master visual communication, this book is for you.
If you want to impress your audience with eye-popping slides, this book is for you.
If you want to break free from the Death By PowerPoint pandemic, this book is for you.
Nancy Duarte has written slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations. (Learn more about Nancy Duarte in a Six Minutes interview!)
Ever since my copy arrived, I can’t put it down. I’ve carried it to and from work every day so that I can read a few pages on breaks. It’s that good.
I highly recommend slide:ology. It is destined to become a classic reference text for presentation skills.
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