Articles tagged: visuals

Designing attractive slide visuals does not need to be a painful task. You don’t need to hire a design firm. You don’t need loads of expensive software.

You can design attractive visuals by following simple guidelines.  One of these simple guidelines is the Rule of Thirds — a composition technique borrowed from photography and other visual arts that works wonderfully in PowerPoint.

In this article, you will learn:

• What is the Rule of Thirds?
• How do photographers use the Rule of Thirds?
• How can you apply the Rule of Thirds to Your PowerPoint slides?

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I wish all my colleagues would read this business communications book.

Advanced Presentations by Design: Creating Communication that Drives Action offers a comprehensive approach to planning and designing presentations focused on selling ideas and persuading your audience.

This article is the latest in a series of public speaking book reviews here on Six Minutes.

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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.

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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.

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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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Stephen Kosslyn has written a wonderful book for all presenters: Clear and to The Point: 8 Psychological Principles for Compelling PowerPoint Presentations.

The subtitle for the book promises to illuminate the psychology of PowerPoint. Does it deliver?

In a way, yes. The 8 principles, dozens of examples, and hundreds of tips reveal much that would improve your PowerPoint skills.

However, this book delivers so much more. The 8 psychological principles can be applied to many aspects of public speaking beyond PowerPoint design.

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Would you like to win a Macbook Air?
An iPod Touch?
An Amazon Kindle?
A copy of Presentation Zen?

The World’s Best Presentation Contest is returning to SlideShare for 2008.

Get creative, enter the contest, and you can win one of those prizes.

Leave a comment linking to your entry. If a number of Six Minutes subscribers enter, I’ll feature those entries in a future article.

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Are you still annoying your audience with boring slide after boring slide?

Break free from PowerPoint bullets!

Learn from photojournalists — tell stories with visuals, and your audience will love you.

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Visualizing Information for Advocacy: An Introduction to Information Design teaches you how to visually communicate your ideas.

This free ebook was created by John Emerson as a tool to help advocacy groups:

• Tell their story more effectively;
• Make their message more compelling; and
• Use information design techniques to do it.

You may not speak on behalf of an advocacy group, but every time you speak, you are attempting to deliver a message. Your message will be more compelling if you understand and apply the visualization principles in this guide.

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I previously reviewed the fabulous Presention Zen book by Garr Reynolds.

My favorite aspect of the book was the hundreds of sample slides which illustrate design principles, particularly those illustrating before versus after transformations.

I’ve just discovered a great online resource from Garr Reynolds which contains a representative sample of the book contents.

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Presentation Zen book reviews, to be more accurate. Lots of them.

In the spirit of Rotten Tomatoes – a site I always check before buying or renting a movie – this article gathers book reviews from public speaking experts and fellow bloggers.

A summary of their opinion is simple: buy this book and the slides in your next presentation will benefit.

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