“Death by PowerPoint” is still the norm within corporate environments, especially for internal audiences. Sad, but true.
Combine poorly designed presentations with the ADD that’s so common among corporate employees, and you have a recipe for miscommunication and productivity loss. No wonder people would rather check email or look at their Blackberry than focus on your presentation!
It’s bad enough when your presentations bore or confuse co-workers, but poorly designed presentations can have serious consequences with partner, customer or shareholder audiences.
These days, there’s no excuse for bad presentations when stakes are high. There are many resources readily available for presenters who aspire to make an impact or drive change as a result of their presentations. Do you want to make a difference in 2010?
Fortunately, visual literacy is a skill you can learn and practice, even if you don’t think of yourself as artistic or visually gifted. Better yet, the skills involved in clarifying your message will help you up your game when it comes to problem solving and making your case.
The Secrets of Great Presentations
Here are some of the most influential writers, educators and practitioners who offer visual communications help via books, blogs, webinars, speaking engagements, workshops and/or on-site classes. They share their secrets via the following books and blogs, which I recommend as a great source of core principles and techniques:
Online Resources |
Books |
| Nancy Duarte’s blog, with links to webinars, YouTube videos, etc. | Slide:ology, The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations by Nancy Duarte — the most comprehensive resource available |
| Garr Reynold’s blog, full of “presentation zen” principles and links to other books and resources, including this synopsis of his key concepts | Presentation Zen Design, by Garr Reynolds, offers specific guidance on design principles to enhance presentations — a great companion to Presentation Zen |
| Dan Roam’s blog, with lots of resources on visual thinking | The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures, by Dan Roam — offers a wonderful framework for problem solving, visual thinking and communications |
| Unstuck: A Tool for Yourself, Your Team, and Your World, by Keith Yamashita and Sandra Spataro — a practical guide for diagnosing your situation and finding creative solutions, especially in team-based settings | |
| Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, by Chip Heath & Dan Heath |
My current favorites are Slide:ology and Presentation Zen Design. But, much as I love the design sensibility and principles of the Presentation Zen books, the brainstorming and problem solving guidance in Slide:ology makes it a more comprehensive resource — what I’d buy if I could afford just one resource on presentation design.
Thinking Holistically about Presentations
Slide:ology is comprehensive because author Nancy Duarte approaches presentation development from a big picture perspective, as she illustrates here:
Her book discusses all 3 core components of successful presentations, with an emphasis on the concepts, principles and techniques involved in both message development and visual storytelling. Her case studies and illustrations include techniques that her firm uses when developing presentations for high-profile clients like Al Gore. (Her firm was the visual powerhouse behind Al Gore’s award-winning An Inconvenient Truth.)
Both Duarte and Roam’s books provide very helpful frameworks for concept development and visual thinking, especially for diagrams and arrangements used to depict ideas and relationships among data.
Both experts are strong advocates of starting the brainstorming and problem solving process away from the computer screen, using napkins or Post-It notes as a technique to focus on the essential ideas to be communicated.
As a New Year’s resolution for 2010, why not commit to investing time and energy to learn how to be a more effective presenter? It’s well within your reach.
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wow, awesome blog. Will read on…
A topic near to my heart thanks, please consider a follow up post.
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