To prop up the debate a bit, I invited a colleague with a little more first-hand experience with both technologies to provide support to the counter-argument.

Thanks to her, here are 32 reasons a PowerPoint slide deck is nothing like a bra.

1. I wear a bra every day, but could do without daily PowerPoint.
2. Personally, I think most other women would benefit more from a bra than PowerPoint too.
3. You can’t buy a PowerPoint slide deck off the shelf.
4. There’s no such thing as a Push-up PowerPoint deck.
5. There’s no such thing as a Miracle PowerPoint deck, not even from Nancy Duarte or Garr Reynolds.
6. You can’t improve a bra, but you can improve a slide deck.
7. You can’t give away your slide deck to someone who would fit it better.
   

   “Nobody ever asks for a copy of my bra after a meeting.”

8. Bras don’t have annoying transition effects like “window blinds“, “newsflash”, and “fade out”.
9. Bras don’t have annoying sound effects.
10. It’s never a surprise when someone pulls out a PowerPoint slide deck in a business meeting.
11. People will fall asleep in front of a PowerPoint slide deck.
12. No one anticipates the Victoria’s Secret PowerPoint catalog.
13. A bra works perfectly even if there’s no projector, screen, or laptop in the room.
14. Nobody ever asks for a copy of my bra after a meeting.
15. A PowerPoint slide deck is completely useless when exercising, while a bra is only somewhat useless.
16. You can’t craft a bra to suit your purpose.

    “Your employer will likely issue you a standard slide deck in corporate colors.”

17. Bras might be persuasive or motivational, but are rarely educational.
18. The Rule of Thirds says a slide contains four “power points”;
    human anatomy says a bra contains two “power points”.
19. Death by PowerPoint is an overused cliche.
    Death by Bra is not (yet).
20. 40 point bold text on a slide deck is acceptable.
    On bras? Not so much.
21. Only one Nobel Peace Prize winner uses PowerPoint, but nine wear bras. (An inconvenient truth or fiction?)
22. You can’t use the same slide deck all day long, day after day.
23. Slide decks don’t transition well from day to evening.
24. Teenagers know how to use bras, but adults still have trouble with PowerPoint.
25. Your mom will usually buy your first bra for you.
26. With bras, only teen-aged girls pad them with useless fluff.

    “Bras might be persuasive or motivational, but are rarely educational.”

27. It’s socially acceptable for men to use a slide deck, as long as it’s a good one.
28. PowerPoint slides look best when projected on a flat surface.
29. Guy Kawasaki has no 10-20-30 rule for bras.
30. Establishments that outlaw bras are labeled “trashy.”
    Companies that outlaw PowerPoint are labeled “forward-thinking.”
31. Your employer will likely issue you a standard slide deck in corporate colors.
32. A laser pointer rarely accompanies a bra.

Can You Add One?

What differences did we miss? Or maybe you’ve got a similarity to add to the debate?

Send in your suggestions, or add them in the comments.

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Have a Question? Contact me anytime, or find me on Twitter: @6minutes

Linda Wu works as a Research Analyst in Vancouver, Canada. When not staring at code on her computer, she likes to think and write about ways to improve technical communication.

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.

How does Multimedia Learning compare to other books?

Let’s set the context:

• Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds (previously reviewed here)
• Slide:ology by Nancy Duarte (previously reviewed here)
• Beyond Bullet Points by Cliff Atkinson

All three of these are:

• More popular than Mayer’s work. [In fact, these are three of the 9 most popular books on PowerPoint, according to amazon.com.]
• More applied in nature.
• More directly tied to public speaking.

Yet, all three offer advice which is, in part, based upon research explained by Mayer in Multimedia Design.

So, who should read Multimedia Learning?

Given that Richard Mayer is a professor of psychology, it is not surprising that Multimedia Learning is written in an academic style. I believe it is this style which hinders its mainstream appeal. (And the pedestrian cover design.)

However, the content is fascinating and provides scientific explanations which leads to deep understanding of much of the contemporary approach to slide design.

For this reason, I think the primary audience for Multimedia Learning is:

• Professors, teachers, and trainers who create, design, and deliver instructional courses
• Professionals who are frequently involved with slide design
• Public speaking instructors and coaches

12 Principles You Learn from Multimedia Learning

Mayer’s work is organized around 12 key principles. Each chapter introduces the principle, describes the methodology used to study it, and summarizes research results.

1. Coherence Principle
   People learn better when extraneous words, pictures, and sounds are excluded rather than included.
2. Signaling Principle
   People learn better when cues that highlight the organization of the essential material are added.
3. Redundancy Principle
   People learn better from graphics and narration than from graphics, narration, and on-screen text.
4. Spatial Contiguity Principle
   People learn better when corresponding words and pictures are presented near rather than far from each other on the page or screen.
5. Temporal Contiguity Principle
   People learn better when corresponding words and pictures are presented simultaneously rather than successively.
6. Segmenting Principle
   People learn better when a multimedia lesson is presented in user-paced segments rather than as a continuous unit.
7. Pre-training Principle
   People learn better from a multimedia lesson when they know the names and characteristics of the main concepts.
8. Modality Principle
   People learn better from graphics and narration than from animation and on-screen text.
9. Multimedia Principle
   People learn better from words and pictures than from words alone.
10. Personalization Principle
    People learn better from multimedia lessons when words are in conversational style rather than formal style.
11. Voice Principle
    People learn better when the narration in multimedia lessons is spoken in a friendly human voice rather than a machine voice.
12. Image Principle
    People do not necessarily learn better from a multimedia lesson when the speaker’s image is added to the screen.

About Richard E. Mayer

Richard E. Mayer is Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

From his home page:

His current research involves the related disciplines of cognition, instruction, and technology with a special focus on multimedia learning and computer-supported learning. [...]

He was ranked #1 as the most productive educational psychologist in the world for 1991-2001. [...]

He is the author of more than 390 publications including 23 books, such as Multimedia Learning: Second Edition (2009), Learning and Instruction: Second Edition (2008), E-Learning and the Science of Instruction: Second Edition (with R. Clark, 2008), and the Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning (editor, 2005).

Get Your Copy or Read Other Reviews

• Title: Multimedia Learning
• Author: Richard E. Mayer
• ISBN: 0521735351
• Get a copy from your local bookstore, or from these online sources (also with additional reviews):
  • amazon.com
  • amazon.ca
  • amazon.co.uk
  • amazon.de

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Have a Question? Contact me anytime, or find me on Twitter: @6minutes

Andrew Dlugan is the editor and founder of Six Minutes. He teaches courses, leads seminars, coaches speakers, and strives to avoid Suicide by PowerPoint. He is an award-winning public speaker and speech evaluator. Andrew is a father and husband who resides in British Columbia, Canada.

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 teach a course titled Powerful PowerPoint Presentations. You’ll be happy to know that this course is always oversubscribed. Everyone is eager to tap into the power of PowerPoint.

I wish these people were motivated to become great PowerPoint artisans because their peers were giving fantastic PowerPoint presentations. Unfortunately, they are quite happy to become “adequate” users, because they know that any skill at all will put them in the top echelon.

Are PowerPoint users all morons? No, I don’t think so.

Is the tool itself crappy? Certainly not!

Perhaps the power of PowerPoint is just too great for the majority of users to handle by themselves. Like a jackhammer in the hands of a child, perhaps.

So, please consider the following suggestions to help tame the power of future PowerPoint versions.

1. Eliminate Slide Transitions

The verdict is in… users cannot handle the responsibility. If I had a dime for every random gratuitous slide transition that I’ve seen, I would have been grossly underpaid for suffering through these presentations.

Speaking of dimes, if you cannot eliminate the slide transition feature, consider making a user pay 10 cents for every slide transition used beyond 2 (a clear sign they are being overused). Donate the money to kiva.org. Here’s your ad slogan:

Microtaxing for Microlending… by Microsoft

2. Rewrite Your Documentation

From PowerPoint 2007, I searched for help to change the font. To my horror, I was presented with instructions to change the font in Access, InfoPath, OneNote, Outlook, Project, Publisher, and (hurray!) PowerPoint.

Why am I bombarded with all these non-relevant details? If this were a speech critique, I would be pointing out how reams of irrelevant details makes it more difficult for your message to reach your audience. But, I digress…

Instead of just spewing mechanical details, (e.g. “On the Home tab, in the Font box group, type or click a font in the Font group“), why not provide them with a virtual speech coach with useful advice like:

• Using fonts consistently makes your slides look more professional.
• When using different fonts on a slide, do so with purpose (e.g. one font for titles, one for labels), not to make things “look interesting”.

3. Partner with the Best

If you cannot rewrite your documentation, consider a marketing deal with Nancy Duarte to bundle a copy of Slide:ology with every license of PowerPoint. Seriously.

4. Prevent Suicide by PowerPoint

Atrocities are committed hourly with bullets, font choices, and colors, but you can’t exactly eliminate bullets, fonts, and colors from PowerPoint.

However, you can perform up-to-the-second analysis of the slide deck, and put up warnings when the user is making bad design decisions.

Some of these are trivial to implement:

• Count the number of words on a slide, and display it in the status bar. As the count rises, put up progressively stern warnings. (“Red alert: 100 words is a great start to a novel, but a lousy visual aid”)
• If the slide deck consists entirely of text, suggest that the user create a report in Word instead. (Better yet, just automatically launch Word after the 13th text-only slide.)
• Count the number of font variants in use in a slide deck. Caution users that their colleagues will laugh at them if every slide is something new. Better yet, give us an automatic way to apply a consistent font face throughout an entire slide deck. This would be especially helpful when cobbling together a presentation from multiple sources using cut-and-paste.
• Compute contrast ratios for all adjacent colors, and warn the user when something is hard to read. (“Pink text on yellow background may be hard for your audience to read.“)

5. Provide Better Support for Outlines

Presentations need to have a clear speech outline.

PowerPoint’s outlining support is awful. Both Outline Mode and Slide Sorter Mode give presenters only a one-dimensional stream view of their slides. The resulting slide deck is too often a sequence of individually designed slides that have no flow or macro-organization.

Make it possible to arrange groups of slides into units (e.g. these four slides are “background”, these eight are the “technical summary”).

• Let us apply formatting to entire units (e.g. a different background color to each section of the presentation as a visual cue to the audience).
• Let us create hierarchies among groups.
• Provide support for doing more presentation-level design.

6. Remember the Room

Some PowerPoint slides are designed entirely to be viewed at a computer where 10 point font is acceptable, even if not recommended. However, presenters are often oblivious to how their slides will look in a larger room. This isn’t your fault, but…

When a new slide deck is created, ask the user to specify the presentation setting, in general terms (e.g. small meeting room, lecture hall, etc.) or approximate dimensions. Use this to provide guidance on readable font sizes, diagram detail, etc. For example, I recently took an audience survey in a room with only six rows of chairs. Users at the back could not comfortably read fonts below 28 point font.

7. Enable Users to Insert Good Visuals

Please, end the clip art insanity.

Instead, allow us to search through stock photography website catalogues from within PowerPoint. (You can even take a cut of any purchased photos!) Once images are selected, make it easy for us to crop, resize, and optimize these photos (within PowerPoint) for embedding into slides. Why do I need yet another application open to do this?

8. Help Users Manage Slide Libraries

Don’t make us use third-party tools to organize, catalog, and search through slide libraries built up over time (particularly in corporate contexts). Provide this functionality in PowerPoint itself.

• Let me easily find all slides I’ve created with the words “Web 2.0″ in them, and then choose among them to insert into a new presentation.
• Create a Super Slide Sorter that provides a slide desktop where I can sift through slides from dozens of presentations at a time, selecting what I need, and then easily combining them into a new presentation.

Sincerely,

Andrew Dlugan
Six Minutes Public Speaking and Presentation Skills

p.s. Contact me if you’d like to discuss more ideas.

Your Wish List?

What features do you want the PowerPoint team to add/delete/change in future versions? Let me know in the comments.

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Have a Question? Contact me anytime, or find me on Twitter: @6minutes

Andrew Dlugan is the editor and founder of Six Minutes. He teaches courses, leads seminars, coaches speakers, and strives to avoid Suicide by PowerPoint. He is an award-winning public speaker and speech evaluator. Andrew is a father and husband who resides in British Columbia, Canada.

But, after reading his “Top Ten Best (and Worst) Communicators of 2008” list, I’m confused — how did he get it wrong?

Best Communicators of 2008

1. Barack Obama
2. Tim Russert
3. Randy Pausch
4. Colin Powell
5. Mike Huckabee
6. John Chambers
7. Sarah Palin
8. Nancy Duarte, Garr Reynolds, Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki
9. Tina Fey
10. Anderson Cooper

Worst Communicators of 2008

1. George Bush
2. Richard Fuld
3. Rod Blagojevich
4. Eliot Spitzer
5. Roger Clemens
6. Sarah Palin
7. Dan Rather
8. Al Davis
9. Rosie O’Donnell
10. John McCain

Okay, top 10 lists are subjective by nature. They are one person’s opinion. Can Bert Decker really be wrong in his opinion? No, he can’t.

So, instead, I’ll just have to say that I am disappointed with this year’s lists for three reasons:

1. Too much emphasis on politics.

60% of the individuals cited are intimately tied to the political arena.

• 7 of the Best are either politicians (Obama, Powell, Huckabee, and Palin) or closely tied to politicians in 2008 (Russert, Fey, Cooper)
• 5 of the Worst (Bush, Blagojevich, Spitzer, Palin, and McCain) are politicians

This is a bit like having 60% of the “Best Athletes of 2008″ be Olympic heroes and disappointments. [Then again, perhaps Michael Phelps could be #1, #2, ... #8.]

Yes, 2008 is a presidential  election year. And, yes, communication is an integral part of politics. However, there’s a whole world communicating out there outside of the political arena too. Duarte and Reynolds merit much higher consideration, for example, because they are helping transform the public speaking status quo.

2. “Worst Communicator” = “Scandal-ridden”??

(At least) Six of the 10 Worst were caught up in scandals of varying degree in 2008: Fuld, Blagojevich, Spitzer, Clemens, Davis, O’Donnell.

Which of these seem more likely?

1. Bad communication leads to scandal?
   Did these people end up embroiled in scandal because they are poor communicators? No, the scandals resulted because they made (very) bad decisions.
2. Scandal leads to bad communication?
   Before the scandal broke, were they particularly bad communicators? Maybe. Maybe not. But without those scandals, none of these people would be on the list. Feelings of guilt plus a camera and microphone is a bad combination… for just about anyone.

I’m not saying that these people demonstrated good communication habits under fire. But, it is rare for someone to be under fire and come out looking like a great communicator.

I’d prefer more emphasis on this list on genuinely bad communicators not tied to scandals (Bill Gates is the often cited example here, although that title is not always deserved.)

3. Randy Pausch, not Barack Obama, is the Best Communicator of 2008

It’s a difficult task to argue against Barack Obama in #1 position. It would not surprise me if he earns that position for the next eight years.

• His oration skills have been compared regularly to Lincoln, Churchill, and Kennedy.
• His speaking prowess far outdistanced that of his two main rivals this year (Hilary Clinton, John McCain).
• His speeches are worthy of analysis (he has already been featured on Six Minutes, and he will continue to be going forward).

But, it is overkill to suggest that “he was elected President BECAUSE of his communications ability“. Numerous factors contributed to his victory, including these three:

• Superior Fundraising — His campaign excelled at fundraising in ways never seen before.
• Superior Strategy — His team had the best strategy (both in the Democratic primaries and the general election).
• Inferior Bush — The economy and Iraq (among many other reasons) doomed any candidate the Republicans put forward.

Running for President put Obama in a very select group, and gave him a global audience. To his credit, he maximized this opportunity. But would he be first on this list if he were giving these same speeches as just the Senator from Illinois? Would he have moved millions to action if he were just a party strategist? Or a community organizer from Chicago? Or a computer science professor?

Randy Pausch was a computer science professor. He had virtually no audience — just an auditorium filled with 400 people at Carnegie Mellon University. He had no fame. No reputation. No speechwriters. No army of volunteers. He had nothing to guarantee an attentive audience other than a particularly timely lecture and a death sentence of pancreatic cancer. As he points out in his book, this fact hardly makes him unique — more than 37,000 Americans are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer each year.

Despite all of this, over 8 million people have watched Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture on Youtube alone. That’s quite an increase from the 400 who saw it live.

Pausch’s Last Lecture is poignant, thought-provoking, emotional, funny, inspirational, and memorable. Pausch lacked Obama’s polish as a classical orator, but he is second to none as a communicator.

His skillful communication continued beyond his famous speech into his bestselling book, which I received for Christmas a few days ago. In addition to all the life lessons, every speaker can learn from how Pausch teaches a lesson through storytelling. If you enjoyed the stories in the speech, you’ll love the additional stories in the book. Ditch the facts, figures, and PowerPoint… just tell stories.

In short, 2008 saw Pausch emerge from complete obscurity to touch the hearts of millions… all from a single speech to an audience of 400. He proved that if you speak from the heart, the world will listen. For that, he’s the best communicator of 2008 in my book.

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Have a Question? Contact me anytime, or find me on Twitter: @6minutes

Andrew Dlugan is the editor and founder of Six Minutes. He teaches courses, leads seminars, coaches speakers, and strives to avoid Suicide by PowerPoint. He is an award-winning public speaker and speech evaluator. Andrew is a father and husband who resides in British Columbia, Canada.

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.

Six Minutes Interview with Nancy Duarte

Question: You revealed that the verbs which you most identify with your life’s mission are “conquer and liberate.” How do these verbs connect with your goals in writing this book or with your plans for Duarte Design?

When I set out to write the book two years ago, it was like a burning passion inside me. It was difficult to explain why I felt an urgency to write the book… but I did. My family was supportive and let me write (conquer) in the evenings and weekends.

It’s a well known fact that presentations are incredibly ineffective. We can keep complaining about the putrid output or stand up and say “enough”.  I got tired of people blaming the tool and not owning the responsibility for the really bad presentations getting delivered every day. I knew that compiling years of experience could raise a new standard. The current way we use slides inhibits our ability to communicate effectively. All this is happening during an era when we have the most exciting innovation in all of history. I want those stories told well and indelibly.

I used to feel guilty about my verbs. When the verbs are combined, it makes me sound like I spend my weekends pillaging or something. I’m actually very caring about my clients and staff. At Duarte the verbs manifest in the culture and structures I put into place. I work hard at creating an environment where creative people feel supported and safe (liberated, per se).

Question: Consider a traditional organization still stuck with the Death by PowerPoint status quo. How would you recommend changing the environment so that higher presentation standards can flourish?

One of the most popular questions I’m asked is around this topic. Corporate citizens are afraid to be different and afraid to put a new stake in the ground and be different. People don’t know if they’ll be able to buck the collective system and still have a job the next day. Corporate-wide change is tough to tackle and can seem daunting. But the most important first step is to address your own presentation communication issues. Work hard on your content development and communication skills. If you can have the guts to change yourself and stand out among your peers, others will follow.

Question: I shared your preparation time estimates (36-90 hours for a 30-slide presentation) with one of my co-workers. His reaction was disbelief: “What? I don’t know anyone who has that kind of time.” What would you say to him?

Many of the principles in the book can improve many of the common run-of-the-mill presentations that people give internally every day. Your friend can apply these principles relatively easily to his next presentation, still spend the same amount of time he usually does and he will have a much better presentation than before reading slide:ology. But I guarantee that if he was gunning to win a one hundred MILLION dollar project or give the keynote address at an event with 15,000 people attending he’d kick in some hours. It’s all relative to how high the stakes are. Low stakes, low effort. High stakes, high effort. The farther folks work their way up the corporate ladder, the more care and planning needs to go into their communication and presentations. The time estimation in the book was a guide for when the communications are critical, not when they are common.

Question: One of the themes present throughout slide:ology is that of continuous refinement toward an end goal. (e.g. from idea to sketch to final image) The same process of gradual improvement over time holds true for speaking skills. As a speaker, what is one skill that you are currently working to improve?

There are two development areas I’m hyper conscious of right now. First, my gestures feel HUGE to me but are pretty wimpy. When on stage it feels like I’m as flamboyant as Dolly but in reality I’m pretty closed in. The other area I’m working on is relaxing my freakin’ forehead. When I am thinking through something, the muscles between my eyebrows contract creating a huge crevice and I look angry. My kids call it my butt head. It’s gotta go!

Question: As a final bonus for Six Minutes readers, can you share a public speaking tip that isn’t related to visual presentation skills? Perhaps a favorite delivery technique or tactic for rehearsing?

I still use 3×5 cards to practice my material. Once the content is final and slides are designed I rehearse the content using index cards. After the first run through, whatever points I miss get jotted onto a 3×5 card. I run through the presentation over and over until I don’t have any more cards in my hands and can still make all my points.  There are still times when I bring the cards with me though just in case.

Other Interviews With and Articles About Nancy Duarte

These are definitely worth listening to and reading.

In particular, the two VizThink.com podcasts below contain a great snapshot of the content in slide:ology. If you are still debating getting a copy for yourself, these two podcasts will convince you.

VizThink.com podcast — August 25, 2008

I think we’re just steeped in a culture that’s used to really crappy presentations. People that stand out spend an enormous amount of time on their presentations. I think that it becomes status quo to put out crappy slides, and when people see it well done, they’re shocked. If people want to get ahead in their career and they really want to stand out, they’ll make the kind of investment they need to make.

VizThink.com podcast — June 18, 2008

I really feel like presentation [software tools] are very powerful, compelling and emotion tools if they’re used well. We should be using them to harness our stories, instead of using them as a filter to ruin them.

The Duarte Manifesto podcast — July 27, 2008

Designing the Perfect Presentation: The design firm behind Al Gore’s Oscar-winning An Inconvenient Truth offers insights on improving a presentation — Carmine Gallo, BusinessWeek.com, April 10, 2007

Start with a Sketch

One Theme, One Slide

Crunch the Data First

Create a Narrative

Maintain a Visual-Verbal Balance

Practice Design, Not Decoration

Extend the Presentation Beyond the Moment

Duarte Design helps Al Gore “go visual” — Presentation Zen, June 1, 2006

We had been working closely with him on his presentation for a while before the concept of a movie was proposed. He would call us with ideas and take us in a direction. Once we’d identified stories or images and had them animated, he would come in for a review. He was brilliant, charming and affirming.

An Interview with Nancy Duarte — Indezine, August 19, 2008

Stories can break the dullard spell that slides have. They also create a more human connection with the presenter. But if the presenter hasn’t worked at creating a strong visual story, audiences can still become frustrated when the presenter uses their slides as a teleprompter. Including stories is a good first step but many presenters aren’t able to take the time required to deliver a presentation without slides-as-crutch.

Similar Articles You May Like... Book Review: Multimedia Learning by Richard E. Mayer PowerPoint Design Wish List: 8 Modest Proposals Presentation Skills Book Review – slide:ology by Nancy Duarte Book Review: Universal Principles of Design 32 Reasons a PowerPoint Slide Deck is Nothing Like a Bra How to Improve Your PowerPoint Slides with the Rule of Thirds

Have a Question? Contact me anytime, or find me on Twitter: @6minutes

Andrew Dlugan is the editor and founder of Six Minutes. He teaches courses, leads seminars, coaches speakers, and strives to avoid Suicide by PowerPoint. He is an award-winning public speaker and speech evaluator. Andrew is a father and husband who resides in British Columbia, Canada.

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.

What’s In slide:ology?

slide:ology covers the whole visual presentation process, from concept generation to delivery. Examples and case studies abound throughout. The twelve chapters are:

1. Creating a new slide ideology.
2. Creating ideas, not slides.
3. Creating Diagrams.
4. Displaying Data.
5. Thinking like a designer.
6. Arranging elements.
7. Using visual elements: background, color, and text.
8. Using visual images.
9. Creating movement.
10. Governing with templates.
11. Interacting with slides.
12. Manifesto: The five theses of the power of a presentation.

7 Things I Love About slide:ology

There’s a lot to love about this book, and even more to learn. On top of the many presentation design lessons, slide:ology teaches many lessons that apply to all speeches and presentations.

1. Stories

I counted 20 case studies spritzed through the book, joining countless other anecdotes taken from Duarte’s personal or professional experiences.

Key Lesson: Tell a story. Make a point. Tell another story. Make another point…

2. Humbleness

slide:ology is written in a humble, respectful tone throughout. This makes it seem like the lessons are coming from a wise village elder rather than a stodgy industry expert.

Consider the case study of Al Gore in slide:ology. Although Duarte Design worked intimately with Gore on An Inconvenient Truth, Nancy takes no credit for this in the book. Instead, she hands all the praise to the former U.S. Vice President.

Al Gore has done more than any other individual to legitimize multimedia presentations as one of the most compelling communication vehicles on the planet.

Key Lesson: Making yourself the hero of your stories rarely works.

3. Generosity

Some books written by industry rock stars are filled with empty pages which ultimately amounts to “If you want to do X, hire an industry rock star.” This is not the case with slide:ology. Duarte reveals plenty of insider information in this book. And the giving doesn’t end there. Throughout the book, [www] icons refer the reader to extended multimedia content available online.

Key Lesson: Understand that every member of your audience wants to know what’s in it for them. It’s not about you.

4. Honesty

Walk the aisles in the technical books section of your local bookstore, and you’ll find dozens of titles making outrageous claims such as Teach Yourself X in 24 Hours.

Duarte is honest in pointing out the effort required for superior presentations. (36-90 hours to create a 30-slide one-hour presentation) There’s no smoke and mirrors here.

Key Lesson: Be authentic with your audience first, and tell them what they need to know.

5. Personal Connection

I’ve haven’t met Nancy Duarte yet (unless you count email), but reading this book makes me feel like I have. She shares intimate stories about her family and her psyche.

• The foreword is written by her husband, and features a mock presentation from her daughter.
• Page 44 tells the story of a day spent on her office floor categorizing diagrams, complete with a photograph from her youth which illustrates this personality trait.
• Page 84 discusses how she sought out her life mission.

Key Lesson: The best presentations (and books) make a personal connection.

6. Beauty

Every two-page spread in the entire book except the first (Introduction) and the last (A Call to Relate) has a visual element complementing the text. Whether a photograph, a drawing, a table, or an example slide, every design element in the book must have been labored over for hours or days. The design quality reflects the expertise of the entire Duarte Design team, but the decision to pour this quality effort into the book is key.

Key Lesson: Pay attention to the details. They matter.

7. Fun

What else can you say about a book which features:

• A quote comparing Tolstoy’s War and Peace to Dr. Seuss’ One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish
• Pie graphs made with real slices of pie!
• A photo of Salvador Dali sketching in his bathtub

Key Lesson: People learn better when they are having fun. Make them smile.

How could it be better?

There are three things I’d like to see done differently in slide:ology.

1. Follow a Single Example Presentation from Concept to Completion

From chapter to chapter, Duarte covers the full lifecycle of a presentation from concept generation, through sketches on Post-It notes, to slide design, and on to delivery. Examples abound for each of these individual steps.

I’d like to see one example to which the entire slide:ology methodology would be applied. Start by setting the context, and then show the steps to the final presentation. This might add significant length, so perhaps that explains the absence. Maybe the platform for this extended case study could be a companion e-book downloadable on demand. Whatever the format, I’d like to see it.

2. More Flexibility in the Two-page Spread Format

Earlier in this review, I praised the visual elements present on nearly every two-page spread, and I was sincere. I love this style. It reminds me of the STOP method for document creation which is common for proposals and reports.

However, the challenge with this format is that every concept you want to cover needs to be massaged into two-page spreads. Continuity can suffer. I would like to see a little more in the way of chapter introductions and summaries, even if they spill onto three or four pages. Metaphorically, I’d like to zoom out once in a while and reset the big picture. (Something that’s good to do in a long presentation too.)

3. More Comprehensive Table of Contents

With only chapter titles given, it isn’t as easy as I’d like to jump back to a specific topic. Sure, the index is there, but that doesn’t help me if I’m looking for a case study, but don’t remember the organization profiled. This is a pretty minor thing, but I plan to reference slide:ology often; better navigation would help me find the topic I need sooner.

What Nancy Says About slide:ology

Author Nancy Duarte introduces her book in this YouTube video:

Click here to view the embedded video.

What Other Presentation Experts are Saying About slide:ology

Andrew Abela — The Extreme Presentation Method:

It’s a beautiful and useful book.  I recommend it highly.

Richard Bretschneider — Presentations Roundtable:

I know I’ve said this before, but this is a book you need.

Garr Reynolds — Presentation Zen:

My favorite presentation book of all time.

This is high praise, considering that Garr authored his own bestseller earlier this year. [Garr's Presentation Zen is reviewed here.]

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Have a Question? Contact me anytime, or find me on Twitter: @6minutes

Andrew Dlugan is the editor and founder of Six Minutes. He teaches courses, leads seminars, coaches speakers, and strives to avoid Suicide by PowerPoint. He is an award-winning public speaker and speech evaluator. Andrew is a father and husband who resides in British Columbia, Canada.