PresentationZen Design Book Review

PresentationZen Design the new book about principles and techniques for presentations by Garr Reynolds is a follow up from Presentation Zen reviewed in a previous post on this blog. This book is more practical, not a step by step instructions but it has many good examples and offers good advice. For instance which fonts to use, between all those fonts on your computer about 6-8 will do the trick. It boils down to 6-8 fonts and your all set. Instructions how to use Kuler for generating a color theme.

How to communicate with color but also how to acquire good colors for your presentation based on the content and message you want to get across. How to use images and especially videos during presentations. The book is full of very useful and new examples, tricks and advice. The chapter on presenting data is even better than the chapter in the previous book.
The three chapters on principles of presentation design are about the use of space, creating purpose and focus and achieving harmony. He does his best to show you how these design principles depend on your message and how to get this message across with design.

The book is full of excellent examples of slide design but also has other specialists in their fieled giving additional advice such as Scot Kelby sharing 10 tricks for getting better-looking photos to use in your presentation, or Stephen Few’s graph design IQ test and many more specialists in subjects on design and presenting. Just one more example, Nancy Duarte from Duarte Design also an expert, about the role of sketching and planning analog. She also wrote an excellent book about presenting discussed on this blog in a previous post: Slide:ology

Should you buy the book even when you already have the previous one?
Yes definitely, learned even more from this book, more practical advice on making good presentations not only the design, go get it and enjoy.