Telling Stories

I just read a wonderful book on how to put presentations together called slide:ology The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations by Nancy Duarte, one of the principals of Duarte Design. I really got a lot out of reading her thoughts on how to create ideas and stories instead of just slides. At Firstborn, we've been working on refining our message as well as our presentation materials over the course of the past few months and her book has inspired me to look at our presentations in a new light. A presentation needs to serve as a visual aid to your message not as a document. There's a great quote by Seth Godin in the book: "Communication is about getting others to adopt your point of view, to help them understand why you're excited (or sad or optimistic, or whatever else you are). If all you want to do is create a file of facts and figures then cancel the meeting and send in a report".