Presentation Zen Design: Simple Design Principles and Techniques to Enhance Your Presentations |  | Author: Garr Reynolds
Publisher: New Riders Press
Category: Book
List Price: $34.99
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Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 1253
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Pages: 264
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9 x 7.4 x 0.6
ISBN: 0321668790
Dewey Decimal Number: 658.452
EAN: 9780321668790
ASIN: 0321668790
Publication Date: December 28, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
In his internationally acclaimed, best-selling book Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery, presentation master Garr Reynolds gave readers the framework for planning, putting together, and delivering successful presentations. Now, he takes us further into the design realm and shows how we can apply time-honored design principles to presentation layouts.
Throughout Presentation Zen Design, Garr shares his lessons on designing effective presentations that contain text, graphs, color, images, and video. After establishing guidelines for each of the various elements, he explains how to achieve an overall harmony and balance using the tenets of Zen simplicity. Not only will you discover how to design your slides for more professional-looking presentations, you’ll learn to communicate more clearly and will accomplish the goal of making a stronger, more lasting connection with your audience.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 15
 Excellent Book for Presentation Creation December 31, 2009
Jason Davis (Portland, OR USA)
15 out of 16 found this review helpful
Presentation Zen Design is an excellent book, geared for people who want to build impactful presentations but lack a deep design background.
Garr's first book, Presentation Zen, did an impressive job at giving an overview of what makes for a great presentation. He covered preparation, crafting the story, basic design principles and delivery strategies along with a nice selection of sample slides.
This book expands significantly on the first book's design section and this is a good thing. Once you've made the decision to move beyond typical PowerPoints it's great to have a book filled with so much practical information and lots of examples. With sections on type, color, images, video, layout and presenting data (an area where so many of the presentations I see fall apart), Presentation Zen Design provides a comprehensive toolkit for creating compelling presentations.
Garr leads by example December 31, 2009
V. Lewis (Sacramento, CA USA)
15 out of 16 found this review helpful
Garr Reynolds is a master of leading by example. His follow-up to PresentationZen, PresentationZen Design has more impact than the first book. It is a joy to look at and absorb the quintessential components of the aesthetics that guide the development of an effective slide deck. The book visually exudes the harmony, style, color and story that the text describes.
Mr. Reynolds' use of photographic images is a bold example for those of us who still think photos are an afterthought. The chapter on the power of the photograph will change your life, especially the tips from Scott Kelby on taking your own photographs to use in your presentations.
Garr Reynolds' presentation techniques did change my life in 2001 when I saw him speak at a computer user group event. Inspired by his refreshing and persuasive techniques, I took a new job in training course development and vowed that I would help as many people as I could escape from presentation prison. I look forward to using this powerful reference to continue to pursue that goal.
Practical Insights for Designing Slide Presentations January 3, 2010
Arthur D. Johnson (Phoenix, AZ USA)
11 out of 12 found this review helpful
I pre-ordered this book in October and was delighted to recieve the package from Amazon.com as a delayed Christmas gift to myself. Reynolds has followed-up his best-selling Presentation Zen with this new book covering the design aspects of slide presentations. I stumbled across the Presentation Zen blog a few years ago and have been a devotee of Garr Reynolds ever since. Along with Nancy Duarte from Duarte Design, Garr has been a seminal thought leader in the movement to replace boring and tedious slide decks with interesting and engaging presentations.
A long-time resident of Japan, Reynolds combines his knowledge of Zen with his design expertise to give us a beautiful book with a strong point of view advocating simplicity as a foundation for slide presentations. The book goes well beyond mere advocacy and is chock full of specific techniques and tips that will help you build a winning presentation. Even though I've followed his work for some time, I found several useful new ideas that I'll be able to implement immediately.
Presentationzen Design covers everything from typefaces and color, through negative space (read the book), and harmony. However, Garr doesn't just make a point and move on. I especially appreciated the great research and added content. He sprinkles in supporting articles from subject matter experts such as Nancy Duarte on sketching and planning in analog, David S. Rose "The Pitch Coach" on the importance of design and delivery in high stakes venture capital presentations, and John McWade on the use of photographs to tell your story. If you can only have one design book for building your presentation this is it.
Slide design for non-designers January 14, 2010
Michael Eury (Melbourne, Australia)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Garr Reynolds' new book, PresentationZen Design, follows-up his first book, PresentationZen. His first book was in many ways a summary of Garr's presentation style, looking at presentation preparation, design and delivery. I suppose it is no surprise that his second book expands on one key area from his first book, slide design - I say it is no surprise because it is Garr's design style that most defines him. If you already have his first book, this new book is really chapters 5, 6 & 7 expanded, however don't take this as a negative, what Garr has done here is to write a whole book about slide design. So what should you expect from a book that's subtitled, 'Simple Design Principles and Techniques to Enhance Your Presentations'?
The title of the first chapter gives you a good idea of the focus of the book - Design Matters. As most people who create slides for workshops and presentations are not trained designers, Garr takes us on a journey through his design thinking, drawing heavily on the Zen design traditions of his adopted home, Japan. Slide design is Garr's passion, and to be honest, thank heavens it is, because his approach to presentation slide design may just save us all from having to sit through another slideshow chock-a-block full of bullets, complicated charts, corny clipart and flying text!
The book is divided into three key sections:
Components
In this section the book covers the often ignored importance of Typefaces, particularly the choice of type and it's placement on the slide. Next Garr looks at Communicating with Colour. In addition to looking at some expected terms related to colour and it's use, for example hue, value, saturation, colour combinations, emotional connections and colour choices, Garr brings in aspects from the Zen aesthetic through a lesson in Sumi-e. In Using Images and Video to Tell Stories we enter the area that in many ways defines the PresentationZen style, the use of full screen images to complement and strengthen the spoken and written message - I particularly liked this area! Area covered here again include some technical aspects of image creation and editing as well as reviewing 10 things to avoid when using images. Finally in the component section Garr looks at how best to Simplify Data, how charts can communicate and indeed miscommunicate key messages, I know from experience that many presentations use charts that are barely readable, with far too much data, if all presentations followed the advice given here there would be less sleepy and bored learners and audience members!
Principles
So many slides used in presentations and workshops are full of text, bullet points, charts, and data. The first part of this section looks at Seeing and Using Space, beginning with a lesson in the Japanese art of flower design, Ikebana. Garr looks at the importance of white space, symmetrical/asymmetrical balance, Gestalt theory and the importance of 'less is more'. The use of focal points in slide design is illustrated through the Japanese room design feature known as a Tokonoma, in essence this part of the book, Creating Purpose and Focus, is about how to ensure the audience's eyes see what you want them to see. The section, Achieving Harmony looks at the 'rule of thirds' and grids in general when aligning aspects of your slides and working to connect the various elements to create balance and harmony. Garr must adore his food, especially a Bento Box, I've seen photos of his lunches uploaded via Twitter on more than one occasion! There is a point however, Garr sees harmony in a Bento Box, a balance of flavours, colours, sizes!
The Journey
Finally Garr provides pages of examples of great Slide Samples that illustrate the principles outlined throughout the book. It is always good to see examples, as just as the book reminds us, visual messages trump the written word. The book concludes with a chapter on Continuous Improvement, a good way to end, reminding readers that improving your slide design is a journey not a destination, that through continually learning from the lessons that are all around you - Billboards, Advertising, TV, brochures, package design - your slide design will continue to improve.
Finally I really liked how the book was scattered with 'guest appearances' from Nancy Duarte, David Rose, Maureen C. Stone, John McWade and Scott Kelby. They add another layer again to the book.
So, do I recommend this book, well clearly, yes! PresentationZen Design provides many valuable lessons that can help you to design slides that will engage your audience, it should be on your book shelf!.
If you want to present... January 22, 2010
Aisyah Saad (Penang, Malaysia)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Presentation Zen Design (PZD) is the book to read before creating your presentation slides. Loads of before and after examples, tips, suggestions that you can learn on various aspects of slide design. The PZD book is more technical than Garr's first book, yet the techniques are simple enough to learn for non-designers. So why don't you... Buy. Read. Create. Present using the PZ approach. Your audience will thank you for that. Mine did=).
Showing reviews 1-5 of 15
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