Political Signs are like Slides

November 4, 2008 By Nancy Duarte

A gal named Laura Macias is running for City Council in Mountain View. I’m not sure who she hired to design her political signs but they look like really bad PowerPoint. When you drive by the corner of Grant and Cuesta, there’s a cluster of signs and you can read all of them but hers.

She [...]

Topic: Design, Message
Posted November 4th, 2008 at 11:24 am by Nancy Duarte
Tags: critique, Design, presentation

Experts Share Good ol’ Days of 35mm Slides

October 16, 2008 By Nancy Duarte

Join Jim Endicott of Distinction Communications and Patty Clerico-Parham of Cisco as they share what the glory days were like before PowerPoint. These pros used to make slides by hand with equipment the size of refrigerators.
In case you’re too young to know what a 35mm slide is, here’s a scene from Mad Men where they [...]

Topic: Business, Delivery
Posted October 16th, 2008 at 9:51 am by Nancy Duarte
Tags: interview, podcast, presentation

The Trouble with Transitions, Episode 1

October 13, 2008 By Eric Albertson

Cheesy slide transitions. You’ve seen them. You know them. You loathe them.
You know the ones I am talking about—Boomerang, Checkerboard, Wedge, Blinds, Newsflash and heaven forbid, Random. Speakers put them in their presentation thinking that they will somehow make the presentation more effective. Instead, they usually end up being more of a distraction.
As people begin [...]

Topic: Delivery, Design, Video
Posted October 13th, 2008 at 9:52 am by Eric Albertson
Tags: Design, humor, PowerPoint, presentation, transition, Video, Visuals

Adaptation of Visuals

September 17, 2008 By Nancy Duarte

I’ll never forget the first time I saw Guy Kawasaki present.
He spoke at WWDC, and we tweaked the slides for his presentation. Woot woot–my earliest brush with fame. His session was standing room only, so I watched him from an overflow room with the developers.
That presentation was in 1996, when Guy was an Apple Fellow. [...]

Topic: Design, Strategy
Posted September 17th, 2008 at 10:39 am by Nancy Duarte
Tags: Design, kawasaki, presentation, wwdc

Presenting from an iPhone

September 2, 2008 By Nancy Duarte

I’ve been anxiously waiting for this day since February when I first met Scott Harrison at TED. I sat next to him on the bus that schlepped people from the aquarium party.
After he saw my enthusiasm for his work with the mercy ship Anastasia, he whipped out his iPhone and gave me one of the [...]

Topic: Delivery
Posted September 2nd, 2008 at 10:19 pm by Nancy Duarte
Tags: charity, iPhone, presentation, TED