Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery (Voices That Matter) by Garr Reynolds Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery (Voices That Matter)
Book Review: It's About Mindset and Preparation
Summary: 4 Stars
This book is about getting the correct mindset and preparing for a presentation. It's message is that presentations today suck, and it's because we forgot to take the time to think about it.
This book is not about design techniques, but more about the framework of a good design, and laying down the fundamentals and basics before you work your way through your own techniques.
So in summary, if you need a book to convince yourself (and others!) to make good presentations, this book is a must - but if you're already an expert communicator - this book will be just a fun read, but likely you won't gain anything new.
Book Review: A new view for presentations
Summary: 5 Stars
I think that this book show the way to make better presentations, because Reynolds tell about the creation processes: desing (with pencil and paper) and focus her book in practical aspects.Book Review: PresentationZen - Awesome Book!
Summary: 5 Stars
This is an awesome book! Just great.
If you are interested in doing better project presentations, this is an awesome book!
Highly recommend!
Thanks
Bill Dow
Book Review: I Never Realized How Much Help I Needed
Summary: 5 Stars
When it comes to PowerPoint presentations I've always been guilty of simply grabbing a standard template and pouring in my bullets. I never gave much thought to aesthetics, which is why most of my slides look awful compared to the ones in Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds.
I can see why this book sells so extremely well. It's a beautiful work and features all sorts of great, visual examples to help drive home the author's points. Here are just a few of the great lessons I learned from reading this book:
Don't jump right into the slideware tool...lay out your thoughts using pencil and paper first. Better yet, do it with pencil and PostIt Notes. This seemed so backwards to me at first. After all, I've got the computer so why not use it from the start? After reading what the author had to say about this though I can see I'd greatly benefit from this initial step.
How many times have you been asked, "how many slides will you have in your deck?" I get hit with that every time I make a presentation. I love this excerpt from the book: The number of slides is not the point. If your presentation is successful, the audience will have no idea how many slides you used, nor will they care. Obviously you can take this to both extremes, but the point is we should be less focused on the number of slides.
How about these two questions that probably don't get enough serious consideration early on: What's your point? Why does it matter? Again, I frequently get too hung up on what I want to say and not so much on what I think the audience wants to hear about. I'm scheduled to make a presentation to a group of grad students in a few weeks and I'm starting to realize I don't know enough about their interests, goals from the session, etc., to properly frame my talk.
Don't force your logo onto every slide. Wow, that one won't go over well with our corporate communication team, but, it makes a ton of sense. As I think back about all the presentations I've sat through, there seemed to be a direct correlation between the degree of boredom and the number of times the speaker's corporate logo appeared. Seriously, if you look through this book you'll see templates are for losers. The most effective slides have few words/numbers and use an attractive graphic to help reinforce the point.
Look at each slide as a 3x3 grid and focus graphical elements more in the outer portions of the grid or on the intersection points of the vertical/horizontal lines. This one really becomes clear when you see it in action. The book features several wonderful examples that show how this sort of off-center balance is highly effective (and similar to the effect used in photography).
Speaking of images, the book features a list of some of the better stock photo sites. The author's favorite is iStockphoto but I prefer a free alternative called Stock.xchng (also included in the author's list).
Book Review: Effective, brief to the point and thought provoking.
Summary: 5 Stars
Having grown up in Japanese culture, I find it very interesting to view the subject matter from a cultural or spiritual framework such as zen.
I'm also impressed by how well Garr Reynolds treated hard topics like wabi, sabi and shibumi.
A must-read for anyone trying to improve communication skills!