Information Design Handbook

November 19, 2008 by Nancy Duarte

The Information Design Handbook

There’s a lovely new book that just came out called The Information Design Handbook by Jenn and Ken Visocky O’Grady. it is similar to mine but they focus on the principles of information design (their book is square too which is cool!)

Most of the content in the book can apply to slide design. Here are some that stood out as being readily applicable to presentations:

Grouping is a design principle that wasn’t covered in my book, but it’s a good one. When you arrange information, their proximity and placement lead the viewer to believe they belong together. Meaning can dramatically change the context of content. In the example to the left, our emotional response to the dog image changes dramatically when it is placed with an image of a young family or converted to grayscale and paired with a photograph of a cage.

They also referenced a fascinating study on the ClearviewHwy type design project. The objective of the study was to create a font used in freeway signs that increased the distance of legibility. The goal was to improve safety and increase the distance of visibility for the visually impaired. This is important as the average age gets older every year. So, if my premise is true that slides are like road signs, looks like sans serif has won again!

A nice nod to Richard Saul Wurman’s LATCH theory of organization is a must-have in a book like this. I covered it in an earlier post.

Topic: Book Reviews Tags: Design, highway, information, LATCH, type
Posted November 19th, 2008 at 4:50 pm by Nancy Duarte

Presentations at Carnegie Mellon & NYU!

November 17, 2008 by Nancy Duarte

Presenting at the Apple store was surreal.

There was a nice enthusiastic crowd which included folks from O’Reilly, some family, some TEDsters, Tony Zander (who took the photos for me) and Bert Decker and his wife Dru. Bert did a great blog post on the power of Twitter for this event. He used Flip Video to capture the event. I think I need one of these. I tie my Twitter into my Facebook status so I only have to update one place. I’m not sure what happened in the last two days but I’ve had over 30 Twitter invites. I can’t seem to find the blog or article that pointed this way but it’s a great way to see immediate bursts of blog and press attention. It might have been Garr’s tweet that pointed to Bert’s blog post.

Getting into the Apple store is a huge milestone for me. Almost all the books in the store are on how to use applications so mine really stands out. Look how lovely slide:ology looks on their shelves:

I won huge Mom points with my 18-year old son who put the Apple Store announcement on his Facebook page. He’s the one who talked me into buying a Mac years ago by telling me, “If you carry a Mac instead of a PC, you’ll look 15 pounds lighter.” That’s all I needed for a sales pitch.

In other news, they gave slide:ology away at the Convergence Conference last week in addition to the TED book club which is pretty cool.

There are two more speaking engagements in the next two weeks. Ryan Orcutt and I will be presenting at Carnegie Mellon University. We’ll be working on Wednesday with the design grad students and critiquing the work they’re doing for the AIGA Aspen Design Challenge. After that, we hold a workshop on diagrams and data and than Thursday evening there’ll be a public lecture which you’re all invited to.

After that, I’ll visit my Mom and sister in Hattiesburg, MS and then head up to NYC to speak at Columbia Business School at NYU. That presentation is from 12:30 to 2pm at Uris Hall.

After that little whirlwind, the family is coming to meet me in NYC and we plan to watch the Thanksgiving day parade, eat Thanksgiving dinner at Tavern on the Green, see an opera and Irving Berlin’s White Christmas. It just doesn’t get better than that!

Topic: Diary, Event, Video Tags: Apple, carnegie mellon, NYU
Posted November 17th, 2008 at 2:45 pm by Nancy Duarte

Speaking at SF Apple Store

November 14, 2008 by Nancy Duarte

I’ll be speaking at the Apple store in downtown San Francisco tomorrow at 6:30. The Apple stores as a whole placed a wonderful-sized order for the book. They should be on the shelves of the stand-alone Apple stores no later than next week. Of all the news I’ve received about the book, this one gives me the chills (and it helped win points with my kids too). Hope to see you there!

1 Stockton St (@ Ellis)
San Francisco, CA

image by flickr user stefan friedle

Topic: Diary, Event Tags: apple store, san francisco, sf, speaking
Posted November 14th, 2008 at 4:42 pm by Nancy Duarte

Cliché of the Week: Clip Art

November 11, 2008 by Doug Neff

True story: I was working with a client, reviewing his existing slides with him, and making notes as to what needed work. We came across a data slide containing a large piece of clip art, similar to the fellow you see here.

It was the only graphic in the entire presentation.

I impulsively reached for the delete key, even though we were just reviewing the deck. He stopped me and said, “What’s wrong with it?”

Hmmm.

Let me say first that I have nothing but the deepest respect for this client. And because I’ve known him for years, I felt I could say to him,

“Dude, it’s horrible.”

He suggested we come back to it later, and when he noticed that I started gagging every time we passed this particular slide, he relented. I clicked on the offending image and brought my finger down hard on the delete key. (Very satisfying.)

I’m afraid there’s no single rule I can give you with regards to choosing illustrations for your presentation. I can tell you that this particular one is probably not a good choice. And I can tell you that if you click “Insert clip art” in PowerPoint, you’re probably not going to get a very good one.

Remember how stores used to sell CDs full of “15,000 pieces of clip art”? Well, there was a reason it only cost you twenty bucks.

More importantly, clip art has gone far beyond the realm of “tired cliché”. Clip art achieved cliché status during the Clinton Administration. And most of your colleagues gave it up years ago.

You can, too. Let the clip art library rest in peace.

Topic: Design, Message Tags: Clichés, Design, story, Visuals
Posted November 11th, 2008 at 6:45 pm by Doug Neff

My two favorite books are in Amazon’s Top 10 for 2008!

November 7, 2008 by Nancy Duarte

For the first time ever, two visual communication books have made Amazon’s Best Business Books of 2008 top ten list and they happen to be two of my all-time favorite books.

First there’s everyone’s favorite:

PresentationZen by Garr Reynolds

This book is in the #3 spot of all Business books. The book was beautifully written and designed by Garr himself. It covers how to prepare, design, and deliver a presentation. It ties in principles of simplicity and clarity and shows tons of examples of well-developed and designed presentations. Garr carries a special place in my heart because he’s become a great friend and is the one who talked me into writing my book and I’m glad he did! The intro by Guy Kawasaki summarizes the book best…

Back of the Napkin by Dan Roam

This book plays a significant role in opening up the eyes of the business community towards visual thinking. His S.Q.V.I.Δ. acronym is my favorite concept in the book. He developed taxonomy for problem solving in pictures. I met him last year at the VizThink conference in San Francisco. Very smart AND nice guy, check out his BNET video, it gives a good flavor of the book.

Run out and get these books! They are a permanent part of my collection!

Topic: Book Reviews Tags: 2008, amazon, Book Reviews, books, top 10
Posted November 7th, 2008 at 3:08 pm by Nancy Duarte