The Three Essential Books on Presentation, Part 2: Slide:ology

Arguably the most important person in presentation design today is Nancy Duarte, owner of probably the world’s largest presentation-only design firm, the northern California-based Duarte Design.

Nancy and her firm have been at the forefront of the recent revolution in how information is presented visually, with her biggest claim to fame so far being her firm’s work on Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.

In 2008, Nancy released her primer on presentation design, slide:ology. It remains one of the most important books around on how to put together a visual story in the form of an on-screen presentation.

In contrast to Presentation Zen, slide:ology is more technical and comprehensive with more philosophy and technique. But the book is still very accessible to all. It covers…

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

Though is doesn’t read like a textbook, it could be used as such for designers and non-designers alike. There are sections on creating easy color schemes, using animation to tell your story (why else would you use animation…?), understanding basic design concepts such as grids and image placement, how to create a template, using diagrams effectively and much, much more.

Nancy sprinkles the book with real world samples from Duarte’s portfolio, so you’ll find tons of quick and more involved ideas to inspire your next presentation. And you’ll see throughout that you don’t need a fancy template to communicate your ideas; Nancy is, as I am, a big advocate of designing content, rather than the frame around it.