Nancy Duarte's Slide:ology took up the whole of Sunday - weekends are blessed as I get to read up and this weekend was especially blessed because of my first exposure to a text on presentation skills. I was more fascinated by the design side than the presentation side of things. The book is simply unputdownable.Raced through chapters 1 to 5 and took elaborate notes on Chapter 6 on MS Onenote - much more convenient to structure than Evernote. Chapter 6 is from where the real technical part of design kicks in and Nancy Duarte does a fabulous job of putting it across to non-pros. Dare say I am as excited as a Keats looking into Chapman's Homer for the first time.
Chapter 7 on visual elements is packed with information and worth the second read. This is what I am doing now. Found the explanation of the color wheel along with the classifications of color schemes (analogous, monochrome, complimentary, split-complimentary, triadic, tetradic) especially helpful. Also understood Serif and Sans-Serif, Kerning and Ligatures for the first time.
Nancy style is very fluid and easy and she liberally references other well-known authors on the subject which is why the book is also very informative in terms of follow-up reading. Discovered the principles behind many of the small things that one already knows from being in the practice - axis of graphs should be aligned, sub-bullets have a smaller font, consistent application of caps and application/non-application of full-stops on bullets, color gradations must be discernible on print, avoid text-heavy slides etc.
The text also led me to Garr Reynolds blog which led me to Kuler. Tried the color wheel at Kuler to come up with some designs and borrow a few others which I adapted. Reynold's Presentation Zen is third on my reading list now after Nancy's text and Aaker's "Building Strong Brands" (you can get it cheaper from the Reliance Store at Ambience Mall, Gurgaon) .
Have not managed to get back to the Morgan Stanley report on the Mobile Internet - hope to do so over the week.
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