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These days, it's not just corporate marketing directors tasked with giving computer-based presentations—anyone forced to stand in front of a crowd and talk for more than three minutes had better know how to put together a slide presentation. You're not a professional designer, but you want your slides to look professional. What do you do?
 
Enter Robin Williams, the beloved, best-selling non-designer's designer (with over 850,000 copies of The Non-Designer's Design Book in print!) who has taught an entire generation the basics of design and typography. In The Non-Designer's Presentation Book, Robin expands upon the design principles introduced in her award-winning Non-Designer's series. She explains four fundamental principles of good design as applied to digital presentations, and adds four more principles specific to clear communication with slides.

Whether you work with a Mac or PC, PowerPoint or Keynote, let Robin guide you, in her signature, light-hearted style, through the entire process of creating a presentation—from using the right software to organizing your ideas to designing effective, beautiful slides that won't put your audience to sleep.

In this essential guide to presentation design, you'll learn:

• What makes a good presentation or a bad one
• How to plan, organize, and outline your presentation
• Four principles of designing effective presentations
• Four principles for designing beautiful slides that communicate clearly
• An exhaustive list of timeless presentation rules...that you should totally ignore

User Reviews about The Non-Designer's Presentation Book

Robin Williams has produced an outstanding sequel to her famous book, "The Non-Designer's Design Book", this time focusing on using presentation software such as PowerPoint and Keynote. Instead of explaining all the programs' functions, she outlines (pardon the pun) exactly what makes a good presentation. This isn't just a do's and dont's, but a structured path to making a presentation that will not only educate but also keep your audience awake and alive.

She first focuses on the content of your presentation: clarity, relevance, animation and plot. Good presentations start with good content. Fortunately she saves us all from those boring stand up meetings where the presenter simply reads the slides. Slides should serve as a way to move the speech and engage the audience. After creating good content, Robin then reminds us of the basic design principles she taught in her last Non-Designer's book: contrast, repetition, alignment and proximity. Finally she takes the time to dispel a long litany of misconceptions about how to present. For example, she quickly dismisses the idea that handouts somehow distract your audience - instead it actually keeps them focused on your presentation instead of furiously taking notes. Each of her misconceptions is based on some basic fact of presentations which people took to an extreme.

This is simply a must have book! The checklists at the end are well worth the price of the book in and of themselves

Pros: All the tips and tricks to a great presentation written in an easy to follow and understand guide
Cons: It's not mandatory reading for anyone who buys a projector. It really should be as countless hours of productivity would be gained in corporate America -- Brilliant cure for powerpoint induced insomnia

I have been a fan of Robin Williams since I first read Non-Designer's Design Book, The (3rd Edition) several years ago. Robin understand what it is to simplify the discreet components of design to make them understandable for the novice.

In this book, she applies those principles to PowerPoint. As a conference speaker and college professor/instructional designer I have seen some pretty awful PPTs. It doesn't take much to improve them. Like slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations and Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery this book gets down to basics and illustrates them beautifully. The key difference with this book is it's size. This is short, sweet and too the point, so it's ideal for that too-busy-to-learn-the-right-way person who really needs the help but won't take the time to get it. -- Robin Williams Gets It. Totally.

Most presentation books focus on how to present as a presenter and how to "not design" powerpoint slides. This book finally provides the non-designers out here, myself included, how to build great looking slides that also enhance the presentation.

First, I must admit to being a huge fan of the Non-Designer's Design Book and the Non-Designer's Web Design Book. I think they are two of the best books for us designer deficient business people out there. Now, this book does the same thing for presentation design.

Many of the concepts are similar to those presented in the Design Book and the Web Design Book; however, they are reformed to apply to presentation design.

The section titled "Ignore these Rules" is one of the best sections of the book. This section helps you understand the principles behind many "rules" like "Don't read the slides." When you understand the principles, you better understand when the "rule" applies and when it doesn't. Ultimately, you realize that the rules are guidelines and not really rules at all.

For example, if you have a slide that reads, "First quarter profits rise" and you avoid saying these exact words just because they're on the slide, you'll only feeling the pressure of presentation pundits, who, themselves, often err in educating their audiences anyway. I'd rather learn from someone who has given hundreds or thousands of presentations that are not on the topic of "Presentation Skills" than someone who has given almost exclusively presentations on how to give presentations. Robin Williams is not a "Presentation Skills" presenter, she's a design trainer and she knows what really works in real presentations. Robin, thanks for speaking for all of us non-Presentation Skills speakers out here who know that the pundits are often wrong.

All-in-all, this is a must book in the presenter's library. -- Finally, a presentation book that fills the void

I agree with the other reviewers that this is a good book with lots of practical advice. The only serious drawback is that so much of the information is redundant with the author's other big seller Non-Designer's Design Book, The (3rd Edition). There is basically only one or two chapters worth of new material here if you have read her Non-Designer's Design Book. If you are thinking about designing just for presentations and have not read the other book grab this one for sure but if you have it consider getting something else instead like Presentation Zen Design: Simple Design Principles and Techniques to Enhance Your Presentations or slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations.

-- Good but redundant

The Non-Designer's Presentation Book: Principles for Effective Presentation Design explains the four basic principles of good design as applied to digital presentations and adds four more specific to slides. From how to plan, arrange and outline a presentation to tips for charts, graphs and video, this packs in presentation rules - and tells when to ignore them.
-- Packs in presentation rules - and tells when to ignore them