December 3, 2011

8 Nancy Duarte: Resonate

Our third post in a series counting down the 10 most influential books I’ve read this year – 2011.

Nancy Duarte, Resonate: Present Visual Stories That Transform Audiences, John Wiley and Sons, New Jersey, 2010.

In movies, the sequel rarely surpasses the original in quality and adoration. With books and authors, often the latter books are much better – although not always.
And, following in the tradition of Star Wars, this book is the prequel to one that had already been published.
Nancy’s first books is: Slide:logy : The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations.
This is a great book! And, it came first but really should have come second.
That’s because it’s recommended you create your story first, then your slides.
Thus the second book… visual stories…

The author, Nancy Duarte regarded as one of the worlds best presentation designers. And was involved in transforming Al Gore’s original slideshow into An Inconvenient Truth.

I didn’t expect what I got with Resonate.
I thought it would be beautifully designed. It was definitely that. I love the visual story telling. That so tickles my designer’s soul!
I also expected some intriguing stories. And I got that too! Entertaining and engaging.
I also learnt some wonderful things about designing and packaging my stories and presentations. Great! That’s what I bought the book for.

And, what I got that I didn’t expect was to be inspired. There’s a beautiful, powerful and motivating message in this book too. It presents the possibility that your message and your story could truly change the world. Music to my ears!

And, this is why this book made my most influential list for 2011 – Beautiful, engaging, useful and inspiring.

If you do any presenting on a regular basis then this book needs to be on your shelf. There is no excuse for lame presentations when people like Nancy Duarte are publishing such great work.