Although Nancy Duarte‘s books are very well known in the business and public speaking communities, her incredibly useful books like Slide:ology are overlooked by the art community because they focus on how to make presentations more visually appealing, and — no surprise — artists make things visually appealing for a living so we don’t need a book to convince us to make our powerpoint presentations prettier. However, I think what she teaches about giving good presentations is very important for artists to know as well. Very often we are called to speak about our work, especially when setting up crowdfunding campaigns, and knowing how to do it effectively can take the squirm out of selling that many of us feel when we have to speak about our work.
Nancy Duarte is the founder of Duarte Design, which specializes in creating impactful presentations for companies and individuals. They work with many huge brands as well as many TED speakers, and they’ve made a science of presenting well — especially presenting with visual aids. In Resonate, the author gets past the “How to Make a Slide Work” and “Presenting 101” that is covered in her other books and really goes for the meat of how to make an audience feel what you want — and more importantly — do what you want.
By breaking down some of the most famous speeches and presentations in history (Martin Luther King’s I Have A Dream speech, Steve Job’s first iPhone unveiling, etc.) the author breaks down the parts of an effective presentation in an easy-to-understand and easily repeatable template that you can use to get the effect you want out of any audience both in person and online.
Buy The Book Here: Resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences
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Background on the “notes” part of Book Notes: When I am reading a book, I am a obsessive underliner (especially of non-fiction books). After I’m done, I copy anything I want to remember into my sketchbook. It’s kind of like making personal cliffs notes. This column started because many of the people who have seen my sketchbooks over the years wanted access to some of the pages on books they were interested in. Since I am reading books through the lens of an artist, I wanted to start sharing these notes and condensed reviews with other artists. If you like the tone of the notes, then you’ll know it’ll be worth it to pick up the book.
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