Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery (Voices That Matter)
Author(s):
Garr Reynolds
Label: New Riders Press
Publisher(s):
New Riders Press
Studio: New Riders Press
Manufacturer: New Riders Press
Binding: Paperback
List Price: $29.99
Our Price: $19.79
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Editorial Reviews
Product Description
Presentation designer and internationally acclaimed communications expert Garr Reynolds, creator of the most popular Web site on presentation design and delivery on the net -- presentationzen.com -- shares his experience in a provocative mix of illumination, inspiration, education, and guidance that will change the way you think about making presentations with PowerPoint or Keynote. Presentation Zen challenges the conventional wisdom of making "slide presentations" in today's world and encourages you to think differently and more creatively about the preparation, design, and delivery of your presentations. Garr shares lessons and perspectives that draw upon practical advice from the fields of communication and business. Combining solid principles of design with the tenets of Zen simplicity, this book will help you along the path to simpler, more effective presentations.
Customer Reviews
A stress-reliever
A great compilation of basic and simple ideas about public presentation, yet fundamental ones. You may have read about these concepts already (e.g. Made to Stick, slide:ology), but Garr connects them nicely and the zen concept is not only refreshing, it helps alleviating the stress often assotiated with public speaking.
Excellent advice
The book is its own best review. It is engaging, persuasive and memorable practicing what it preaches and giving a good presentation. The advice is a bit esoteric if you are looking for liniar, rational, step-by-step methodology and is obviously based much more on intuitive thought and art, but this is exactly what the author promised. The book does have sufficient building blocks and practical instructions to get started in the presentation process, but goes far beyond that in scope. The author does seem to capture the true intent of a presentation as being an opportunity to influence and persuade an audience rather than death by power point with data saturated slides. This is not a hold your hand, step-by-step guide to great presentaions. You can not be led to that level of performance. This book however does clearly point the way and encourage you to walk the path to giving great presentaions, but the reader still needs to do the walking.
Shakes my tired patterns!
This book, recommended to me by a student of mine, gave me wonderfully fresh ways to look at my old and tired ways. I have walked away with some good techniques and ways of thinking.
A Valuable Approach to Presentation Design in a Digital and Information Rich Society
Garr Reynolds is a former Manager of WW User Group Relations at Apple Computer, and is a currently a Marketing and Multimedia Presentation Design at Kansai Gaidai University in Japan.
In this "How-to" book, Presentation Zen, Garr offers a fresh teaching approach to presentation design. Garr organizes his book into three sections Preparation, Design and Delivery. Within these sections Garr stresses Clarity, Simplicity and Naturalness.
He cautions not to begin writing your presentation in PowerPoint, and instead to get out a notepad or scratch paper and jump into the creative process feet first. Imagine Shakespeare writing Romeo & Juliet in PowerPoint slides, it would have proved creatively impossible. Before digitizing your presentation, write it down on paper, yellow post-its, or a whiteboard. Generate a lot of ideas and then cut away the unnecessary information, then prioritize and organize your main points.
Garr also stresses not to "Data Dump" or simply paste entire excel sheets full of figures into a PowerPoint slide. Instead Garr asks readers to crunch the numbers first, consider the implications and wider relations and sum up the conclusion on each slide. He points out that the slide is not the place for you to walk the audience through a detailed walk through a process, that is better left to an actual printed document with deep explanation. Rather every slide should state a conclusion, a key takeway that the presenter can expand upon during the presentation.
A worthwhile investment to enhance your presentation skills.
Ignores fundamental realities of presentations
This book is a good source of inspiration and ideas for slides, however, it overlooks key realities of many presentations. That is, most people create presentations that must stand on their own without the speaker because:
1) They are included in conference proceedings. Most conferences have multiple tracks. Unless your slides have sufficient content, then those who missed your presentation are SOL.
2) They are circulated among business colleagues for collaboration or information sharing
3) They are sales or marketing presentations that are typically left behind
These realities invalidate most of the principles of this book which recommends slides that are meaningless or content poor without the voice-over.
What's needed is a book steeped more in the realities of Powerpoint than in artistry.
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