slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations 1st Edition

by Nancy Duarte (Author)

758 ratings

ISBN-13: 978-0596522346

ISBN-10: 0596522347

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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.

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So Where Do You Begin?

The audience will either read your slides or listen to you. They will not do both. So, ask yourself this: is it more important that they listen, or more effective if they read?


If a slide contains more than 75 words, it has become a document. You can either reduce the amount of content on the slide and put it in the notes, or admit that this is a document and not a presentation. If it is the latter, host a meeting instead of a presentation, and circulate the slideument ahead of time or allow the audience to read it at the start. Then you can use the remainder of the meeting to discuss the content and build action plans.	Presentations with 50 or so words per slide serve as a teleprompter. This less-than-engaging approach often results from a lack of time spent rehearsing the content, and is the default style of many professionals. Unfortunately, presenters who rely on the teleprompter approach also usually turn their backs to the audience. The audience may even perceive such presenters as slow, as the audience reads ahead and has to wait for the presenter to catch up.	True presentations focus on the presenter and the visionary ideas and concepts they want to communicate. The slides reinforce the content visually rather than create distraction, allowing the audience to comfortably focus on both. It takes an investment of time on the part of the presenter to develop and rehearse this type of content, but the results are worth it.

About the Author

Principal of Duarte Design since 1990, Nancy Duarte passionately pursues the presentation development and design niche. One of the largest design firms in Silicon Valley and listed as a top woman-owned business in the area, Duarte Design is one of the few agencies in the world focused solely on presentations, whether they are delivered in person, online or via mobile device. Nancy's twenty years of experience working with global companies and thought leaders has influenced the perception of some of the world's most valuable brands and many of humanity's common causes.

Start reading slide:ology: The Art and Science of Presentation Design instantly on your Kindle Fire or on the free Kindle apps for iPad, Android tablet, PC or Mac. Don't have a free Kindle app? Get yours here

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ O'Reilly Media; 1st edition (August 12, 2008)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 296 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0596522347
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0596522346
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.84 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 9.08 x 0.67 x 8.64 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #27,250 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #4 in Presentation Software Books
- #5 in Desktop Publishing
- #8 in Enterprise Applications

Customer Reviews:
758 ratings

About the author

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Nancy Duarte

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Nancy Duarte is a communication expert who has been featured in Fortune, Forbes, Fast Company, Wired, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, The Economist, LA Times and on CNN.

As the storyteller of the Silicon Valley, and 5th largest woman-owned employer there, her firm, Duarte, Inc., is the global leader behind some of the most influential messages in business and culture.

Since 1988, Duarte works with global companies and thought leaders, influencing how the world perceives some of the most important brands and entities, including Apple, AT&T, Cisco, Facebook, GE, Google, HP, Qualcomm, Salesforce, Target, TED, Twitter, Virgin, VMWare, and the World Bank.

Nancy has been a keynote speaker on numerous public stages and her firm counts almost 200 of the Fortune 500 among her firm's clientele. Nancy also speaks at business schools and lectures at Stanford University and UC Berkeley.

Nancy is the author of three bestselling books. Resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences, which identifies the hidden story structures inherent in great communication, spent more than 300 days on Amazon's top 100 business book bestsellers list. Slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations teaches readers to think visually and has been translated into eight languages. The HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations gives readers the tools and confidence they need to master public speaking. Illuminate helps leaders use empathy to create a communication plan that helps teams be motivated to drive change.

Nancy has three grown children who walk in their destiny, a husband who has loved her for, like, ever, and two grand kids that take her breath away.

Customer reviews

5 star		72%
4 star		15%
3 star		8%
2 star		2%
1 star		3%

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Top reviews from the United States

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StuE

Good Information, Difficult to Read, Poor Typography Choices

Reviewed in the United States on January 4, 2020

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I purchased the book after hearing references to the author. The content of the book is very good with many useful insights on how to prepare better slide-based presentations.

However, I have found what is for me a significant problem. The font choice in size and color makes the book nearly unreadable in general room light by any but the sharpest / youngest eyes. Under direct light from a desk lamp the pages can be read, but the ink has such a shine that I'm always tilting the book one way or another to eliminate glare on the paragraph that I'm reading.

For a book offering suggestions to improve presentation design, I'm puzzled by the design choices made for the publication itself. An attractive layout that induces eye strain.

20 people found this helpful

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Buzz Park

Content is 5 Stars but the Form Factor is 2 Stars

Reviewed in the United States on February 25, 2019

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Content is 5 stars but the form factor of the book leaves MUCH to be desired. Nice binding and everything, but the print on the page was way too small. The author or publisher sacrificed readability in order to have a lot of white space on the pages (I'm guessing for artistic reasons). So, many of the illustrations with text were very hard to read and the whole book was hard on my eyes.

Great content, though and definitely recommended.

14 people found this helpful

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Maximiliano Villa

Terrible presentation. It's basically a PDF, horrible to read on an iPad and impossible on a Kindle

Reviewed in the United States on January 2, 2019

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I bought Resonate by this same author and it's a pleasure to read. But this title? It's basically just a PDF of the whole book that is extremely uncomfortable to read on ANY device. It won't download to my Kindle, of course, and it's really hard to read on my iPad as text is very small and pages have lots of white space around text blocks. Wasted space everywhere.
I regret buying this and as I hadn't opened it till now (because I was reading Resonate first!) I can't return it.

16 people found this helpful

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Jeff Stearns

Amazing. I've tried her suggestions again with smaller audiences

Reviewed in the United States on January 19, 2017

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I think there are more insights in this book than anything written on presentations. If you need hand-holding, there are other options, but Nancy Duarte talks about the essentials. It is not fluff. I tried them out at a large conference, using last minute band-aids after reading her book, and what a reaction from the audience. Amazing. I've tried her suggestions again with smaller audiences, and again amazing. I have a lot to learn and experiment yet, but what a wonderful level she elevates you to.

24 people found this helpful

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halle5

Daily driver if you can think critically

Reviewed in the United States on August 16, 2016

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Couldn't help but counter some of the negative reviews precisely on their criticism. I can agree that it isn't didactic and linear but that isn't a bad thing. If you flip through topically it can feel disorienting. If you accept the ideas and work through it, what you find is you circle back to ideas earlier and things hang together in amazing ways. As I worked through each idea, it made the related pieces come alive. What is more, since it isn't trying to create a linear progression, I find pieces I can pull out as focus areas and work through. Example when I go into a new area, I use the "know your audience" material to center from. When I work on creating templates for various streams, I start with knowing the brand first then progress through palette, font and graphical styles. When I'm stuck on trying to convey a concept, I go to the design metaphors. For the past 8 years I've worn this book out as a daily driver to center how I communicate.

15 people found this helpful

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Learn How to Make Exciting Slide Presentation

Reviewed in the United States on July 14, 2020

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Most of us are bored by the typical business slide presentation. Then when we have to do them, we do the same thing, with the same results. I do webinars, and have for over 14 years. I was able to immediately use several of her techniques (she consults on this subject, very successfully) to improve my webinar presentation. I highly recommend the book, which apparently covers many of her consulting points. Very actionable information.

2 people found this helpful

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Dallas Marks

A methodology for creating meainingful presentations

Reviewed in the United States on April 4, 2013

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Nancy Duarte is known for helping high tech firms like Adobe, Cisco, and Google craft their image. She also gained attention by working on Al Gore's documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. Slide:ology is a combination of the words slide (as in PowerPoint slide) and ideology, which is an apt description for the book. Although there are specific prescriptions for making successful presentations, the book does a better job at presenting Nancy Duarte's ideology (although I would use the word methodology) for crafting presentations. If you feel totally lost when you first open Microsoft PowerPoint (or any presentation tool - the book is tool agnostic) or if you feel totally defeated after giving an underwhelming presentation, you'll find this book tremendously helpful. It beautifully covers the entire lifecycle from imagination to creation to presentation.

Based on the rave reviews of this book, I was expecting to experience a presentation epiphany. Although I found some new tips, much of the advice is presented in the books I already own by Garr Reynolds, author of Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery (2nd Edition) (Voices That Matter) and The Naked Presenter: Delivering Powerful Presentations With or Without Slides (Voices That Matter) . Slide:ology is beautiful and inspirational. But in times when I wanted Nancy Duarte's own book to go deeper, she provided reading recommendations for still more books instead.

Still, it's useful to have a few of these guides on your bookshelf and to review them while in the midst of creating your latest presentation. Many times, we reach immediately for Microsoft PowerPoint or Apple Keynote instead of practicing slide:ology. If your bookshelf is light on presentation design books, this book will definitely be a big help. But if you already own a few books on presentation design- like me- you'll turn the last page still hoping for more. Perhaps I'll find more as I read Resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences , her second book.

6 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

James Perkins

Excellent guide to presentation skills

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 9, 2015

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I like this book a lot. As it says in the subtitle, it explains "the art and science of creating great presentations" in a clear and simple way. The text is direct and engaging, sometimes employs a little humour, and the use of case studies, showing principles in action, is an inspired touch that adds an extra dimension to what would otherwise be a well-written, but theoretical text.

Some of the reviews have been disparaging, as if the ideas shown here are somehow "obvious", or this book offers "nothing new". Well, they may be like that to some people, but sit through almost any business presentation, and it's clear that the vast majority of presenters haven't got a clue. This book is not for people who already know how to do it. It's for people who want to improve. As I teach presentation skills professionally, I bought it as both reference and professional development - I knew a lot of it already, but as I have never attended an art or design class, I also learned a lot. And although it focuses on slides, that's not all it looks at - there are many other aspects of presentations discussed that make it a far more rounded text. Ms Duarte reminds her readers again and again that a presentation is much more than just the slides.

There was only one thing that grated: some of the sample slides were very small, written in a miniscule font that was nearly impossible to read, even when the slide was clearly meant to be an improvement. Since there was plenty of space on each page, there was no clear reason why they had to be this tiny, and it went against the principle that was clearly espoused for presentations: make the font large and fully legible to your audience! So for this, I have deducted one star from my rating.

Otherwise, this book is excellent, and I would recommend it to anybody who wants to improve their presentations.

15 people found this helpful

Mike Oxlong

Good - practical information

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 13, 2019

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The quality and feel of this book is excellent, as is the content. My gripe is - the text is small and the illustrations are nearly unreadable without eye strain. Better use of page space would make a good book great

4 people found this helpful

Amazon Customer

Sophisticated Visuals

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 25, 2014

Verified Purchase

In writing The Presenting Coach, I used this book in my research. It is a beautiful book, as you would expect. But it's more than that, it helps you through the art of making good presentation slides. This is the antidote to the complicated, fussy slides of old and guides the reader to think more about the audience-experience and how to make more impact with less on your slides.

I highly recommend it to those who are already good presenters but who want to bring elegance and sophistication into their slide presentation.

Tricia Woolfrey, Author of The Presenting Coach. [...]

4 people found this helpful

Philleas Fogg

Great value and on time delivery

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 21, 2020

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Arrived on time and in excellent condition for the price.

I had access to this as an online resource and wanted a hard copy. The themes and messages in the book are great tools for using power point for documents and for presentations.

Bertie

Excellent guide to design for presentations

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 6, 2016

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This was recommended min one of the Garr Reynolds books and it does add more to the mix. This book gives some guidelines but leaves a lot of latitude for you to innovate with your own ideas.

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slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations 1st Edition

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