slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations | 
| Author: Nancy Duarte
Publisher: O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Category: Book
List Price: $34.99
Buy New: $21.55
You Save: $13.44 (38%)
New (32) Used (5) from $21.55
Avg. Customer Rating:  26 reviews
Sales Rank: 375
Format: Illustrated
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 294
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.9
Dimensions (in): 9 x 8.9 x 0.6
ISBN: 0596522347
Dewey Decimal Number: 005
EAN: 9780596522346
Publication Date: August 12, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product 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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 21 more reviews...
 Very interesting October 10, 2008
A very interesting book for people who uses to make presentations and want to do it different.
Very good graphics, many examples, Ideas, etc
 What an investment in my small business! October 7, 2008
Where to start?
Overall, this is probably one of the best books I've purchased for my own skills growth. I give the occasional presentation and I'm just blown away now that I review my previous slideshows having this book's information in my head.
For me, just the information found in Chapter 7 (of 12) was worth the price of the book. Don't know what Triadic or Tetradic color sampling are? You will when you're done reading. And the suggestions on the use of lighting an text feel common-sense now, but of course that's after reading this book.
The author includes a good mixture of Case Studies, with very simple examples from key companies and organizations that just hammer in the fact that there's so much to learn about proper slide design.
Add to this the discussion on the actual purposes of slideshows and I'm convinced that I can improve my presentations and make certain they fill the requirements of the audience and not my own.
Some random thoughts:
* Chapter 9 on Movement - short but sweet; I'm already trying to figure out how to incorporate some of these ideas into my slideshows.
* Chapter 4 on Data Presentation - another chapter that very well may be worth the price of the book. If you use graphs in your slideshows, this chapter will open your eyes to what we do right and wrong.
* Chapter 10 on Templates - Finally, some good advice on creating my own in-house standards that provide some consistency for my audience.
Overall, a 6-star book. The layout is easy on the eyes, the writing style is simple and relevant, and the examples are plenty and to the point. I wish I'd had this book in college and highly recommend it to any up-and-coming entrepreneurs who want to get attention. Great job, Nancy Duarte.
Adds Something New and Elegant to Presentation Literature October 6, 2008
I teach people how to win in high stakes presentation situations. I have always advocated the power of verbal visuals (metaphors and analogies) to drive home a point particularly "when your audience just doesn't get it." I love Slide:ology because it is a brilliant book for anyone who needs to make a point with actual visuals. Rich in examples and case studies, its messaging and lay-out model what it is selling with grace, elegance and sophistication. A must-have for all communicators.
Must have for presenters October 1, 2008
I typically post reviews of books based on technology topics like .NET, LINQ, etc. but I thought this book would be a could fit for the site. This book is about creating effective PowerPoint slides which many technology professionals, like myself, do on a regular basis. On to the review...
The author breaks up the book into multiple chapters but not your typically kind of chapters. These chapters are about the different parts that make up a slide; graphics, displaying data, diagrams, use of movement, etc. Each chapter is typically closed with a Case Study which demonstrates the use of the technic or recommend. This is done by showing a before and after presentation. The author also reinforces her points effectively by using graphics, colors and illustrations.
The book is chock full of handy tips and suggestions that anyone can use to create dazzling and effective PowerPoint slides. If you present using PowerPoint, this is a must have.
4.5 Stars: Great book, just needs wider variety of examples September 30, 2008
This is a great book that I would give 4.5 stars if I could. I'm a Marketing VP, I bought it to help clean up our text-heavy, no-white-space slides. Now the Sales VP is studying it, and have you ever seen a sales guy study anything?
The best part of the book is it's step-by-step exploration of the whole presentation process, from creating ideas, through diagrams, images, colors, templates, etc. Most other resources focus only on the slides, which is just the visible end product of the whole process. This book does not slack on the slides either, with lots of color examples.
Why not five stars? After studying the book for a few days, I realized that there could have been a much wider variety of presentation samples. There is a bit of sameness to the examples shown. An example of a software product presentation, and of a consumer sales presentation, would have added great variety. In fact, one spread is devoted to an Audience Definition exercise, with a very detailed profile of the "empty nester" audience for a presentation about investments or timeshares. While the exercise was very well done, if we could have seen the resulting presentation, it would have gone a long way to getting this book its extra half star.
Make no mistake, this book is worth buying and reading. Buy copies for your staff. Maybe the expanded second edition will have a few more examples.
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