Even though I know core competencies shift, I was somewhat surprised to find myself reading this book with precisely that in mind: developing a core competence. It has indeed come to the point when giving presentations is actually an important part of what I do, so I figured the least I could do is become the best possible presenter. Though I’ve had some training on the topic, this book - slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations by Nancy Duarte – was to be one more stepping stone on that road.
An easy way to say what slide:ology is would be to say that it covers everything you need to know about creating presentations. But that’d be a cop-out, even though it does include a wealth of material that very few presenters have ever thought but should think about. There’s seriously a lot of stuff in the book; from choosing color palettes to designing slide layouts to displaying data to the placement of various elements, all wrapped with an array of design hints and case studies. Even dissecting the life and mood of different fonts is covered, so there’s certainly a feeling that everything you need is there.
But then there are also problems. One issue comes from the author; it’s clearly a book by a designer. This is not a bad thing as such, of course, but it means some elements in the book are more likely to be just personal preferences or styles of the author. It also means a near-complete lack of technical advice on how exactly to accomplish the stated ideas. Other problems come in the form of resources; following every advice in the book will require a team of people working on your presentation full-time. Al Gore may be able to afford that, but most other people in the day-to-day business life cannot. As a result, it can be hard to not feel discouraged when you consider the real-life resource and time constraints you have to live with.
Having said that, slide:ology most certainly earned a spot in my reference library and is a book I’m sure to return to when creating presentations. The book reads well, there’s a plethora of useful information and rules of thumb and some nice examples. And make no mistake, 99% of the people, myself included, would benefit from implementing even a fraction of the advice in slide:ology in their presentations.
