This weekend I was watching an episode of Holmes on Homes, one of my favorite shows and one that I’ve blogged about a couple times before. I love watching Mike do what he does, but this past weekend I found myself wondering why his show is so interesting to me. The answer I came up with is not that home building or construction is that interesting or that he’s helping people out of sticky situationa. Rather, it’s because Mike is an expert and it’s entertaining to watch experts do what they do.

I realized that this is the explanation behind many of my interests. Duff Goldman is a cake-building expert. Steve Jobs is a technology and presenting expert. Click and Clack are car-repair experts. Pixar, Zappos, ILM. And it explains why Bob Ross and Norm Abrams are so interesting to watch, even for people who aren’t painters or woodworkers.

It’s also why this is so interesting to watch:

They all make it look easy.

People who are good at what they do every day are inspiring. I get inspired not to become a painter or homebuilder or computer animator, but to become a master at something. To study and practice and gain experience so that one day I can be the best in my line of work.

The thing to remember, though, is how long all of those folks had to work at their craft before anyone wanted to watch them do it. Steve Jobs spent millions of dollars funding Pixar for ten years before they produced their first feature-length computer animated film. How many cakes or houses did Duff or Mike have to build respectively before they became well-known for what they did? Most people give up long before they achieve mastery.

I’m sure the paths for each of these folks was difficult. I’m sure plenty of people told them that their commitment to their craft was silly. But they persevered and now they’re at the top of their game. And now they’re not just good at what they do, they’re inspiring people in other lines of work as well.

I think the lesson here is that it doesn’t matter what your line of work is. Pick something you’re passionate about and become the best at it no matter what people tell you, no matter how hard the road is. Don’t give up on your beliefs or your family, but set everything else aside that distracts your from your goal. Work hard and stick with it and eventually you can be at the top of your game, too.

When Nancy Duarte announced her second book, a prequel to her wonderful first book, Slideology, I was excited. But when I heard that it was designed to teach about harnessing the power of stories and storytelling in presentations, I was beside myself. I’ve been a fan of many different art forms for as long as I can remember, and I’ve always been particularly drawn to the storytellers, from Billy Joel and Ben Folds, to Tolkien and Spielberg. But despite the large volume of film, music, and literature I’ve consumed in my life, I’ve never really studied the structure of these stories in any great detail.

I purchased the book shortly after it came out about four months ago and during those four months I’ve been poring over it, reading and re-reading the especially good bits. I’ve also enjoyed all the presentations and snapshots of concepts in the book that Duarte themselves have released since then (wade back through Duarte’s blog posts for more). Numerous articles have been written during that time praising the book and Nancy for its clarity and it’s message. I’ve gone back and forth about whether I wanted to write a review. What more could I possibly add to the discussion that hasn’t already been said at this point?

But what I realized is that there are several images and concepts from the book that have stuck in my mind even long after reading them. So, last night, I sat down with a pad of paper and noted the top five things that come to mind as most significant when I think of Resonate, and I’d like to share them with you today.

1. The Hero’s Journey

In Resonate, Nancy introduces a concept I’ve seen time and time again in hundreds and hundreds of films, plays, and books over the years and yet still did not recognize or have a name for: the hero’s journey. Based on the psychology of Carl Jung and the mythology research of Joseph Campbell, the hero’s journey reveals the basic structure of numerous stories, myths, and movies. It’s was amazing to me that I could watch so many movies without coming to an understanding of their structure until it was expressly revealed. I never considered that I might be watching the same story over and over again with different names and faces. This one concept, illustrated below, was remarkably helpful to me and my understanding of how to construct stories. (Click on these images to see them larger.)

[Image source: Duarte.com]

2. The Presentation Form

Equally earth-shaking to me (and thus, memorable) was Nancy’s identification of the shape of a good presentation. Presented as a sparkline, Nancy shows that all good presentations create contrast by comparing what is (the status quo) with what could be, eventually conveying to the audience the idea of what Nancy calls “the new bliss.” A basic diagram of the presentation form is below, and I strongly encourage you to watch Nancy explain the concept herself in this video. How remarkable to now be able to identify a good presentation not only by hearing it, but by sight.

[Image source: Duarte.com]

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find images or examples of most of these last three concepts. They’re so good, though, so I encourage you to find a copy (maybe just sneak into a Barnes and Noble and flip through one…or buy it, it’ll be worth it, I promise) and check them out.

3. Nancy’s Expostion of I Have a Dream and The Gettysburg Address

Nancy uses numerous examples to illustrate how the above form applies to all types of presentations, from scientific lectures to Mozart sonatas. But the examples that stick out most prominently in my mind are when she shows how Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech and Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address so perfectly illustrate that form. Lincoln’s address is so brief that Nancy was able to lay out all of its text, in the presentation form on one page. All of the elements of a great speech are present, and its simplicity, brevity, and eloquence are even more striking when displayed that way. Likewise, Nancy laid out Dr. King’s speech in the presentation form, thus revealing its remarkable structure as well. You can see a similar rendering of the speech by watching Nancy analyze the speech here (the speech overlaid on the presentation form is first seen around 1:10 in the video). Realizing that these presentations, which are already so beautiful just to hear, are also beautifully constructed and lovely to look at was very powerful and inspiring. It makes me want to learn to construct things of such beauty myself.

4. Process Recap

Slideology, Nancy’s first book, was about creating slides, whereas Resonate is all about how to develop content for your speech. Chapters 5 and 6 detail how to generate ideas, organize those ideas into messages and stories, and then create images to support those stories. But on page 142 of the book, Nancy, in a beautiful, two-page spread, recounts the entire process visually and shows how the whole process can be done with nothing more than a pen and a stack of post-its. Seeing the process laid out this way makes the process of writing a speech and creating a presentation (a task that easily intimidates many people) seem simple and very clear. I wish I had a print of that process recap that I could frame and hang on my wall, that’s how thankful I was to have the whole process delineated so clearly. In my opinion, those two chapters alone are worth the price of the book.

5. Be Transparent

The final chapter of the book, chapter 9, is titled “Change Your World” and is not about how to give a speech, but why. Nancy discusses that all great ideas started out as nothing more than that, an idea, and it was up to the people who had those ideas to communicate them to others in order to see those ideas realized. She also talks about the need to use presentation skills for good and not evil, as was done by Jeff Skilling, Kenneth Lay, and Richard Causey during the Enron scandal. All of this was excellent advice, but the thing that stuck out most to me was Nancy’s exhortation to be transparent in order to let people see through you and see your ideas instead. What an amazing concept! The idea is to construct your presentation in such a way that everything — from the delivery, to the visuals, to your mannerisms on stage — points clearly to your message and doesn’t distract from that message in any way. Nancy then gives three keys to being transparent, but I won’t reveal those here. You’ll have to find a copy of her book.

Resonate is an instant classic of presentation theory and a book I’m sure I’ll refer back to very often as I create presentations in the future. I’ve briefly glossed over the parts of the book that stick out in my mind here, but there’s so much more detail in the book. If you give speeches or lectures or lessons or sermons on a regular basis or even occasionally I strongly encourage you to find a copy and absorb as much of the good advice Nancy has collected as you can.

In the summer of 2008, my wife and I took a trip to New York City. One of my favorite places we visited was the Museum of Modern Art, particularly because of the exhibition in their Architecture and Design Department at the time called “Humble Masterpieces.” The exhibition was a collection of spectacularly designed objects that don’t get the recognition they deserve due to their ubiquity as “everyday objects.” Legos. Swiss Army Knives. Zippers. Bubble wrap. Items that seem so simple, but which are examples of the perfect blend of form and function. You can see 100 of the items in the collection in the book, Humble Masterpieces: Everyday Marvels of Design, which was written by the curator of MoMA’s Architecture and Design Department, Paola Antonelli.

The humble, yet remarkably well-designed safety pin.

[Image by clovermountain via Flickr]

I came away from the exhibition with the sudden realization that everything around us has been designed. From paper clips, to drywall, to drain plugs, to Scotch tape. Someone designed it.

But taking another step back, everything around us began as an idea. Someone had a thought in their mind about how the world could be different, maybe not in a huge way, but different somehow. And if it hadn’t been for their ability to communicate that idea to others and to get people to help them realize their idea, their dream would never have become a reality, a real object.

You have ideas, I know you do. For a new website, or a new novel, or a new law, or a new process for changing a tire. Your ability to communicate those ideas to others will mean the difference between your idea’s life or death. Even if you haven’t had your great idea yet, now is the time to learn to learn to communicate so that when the idea comes, you’ll have the tools to capitalize on it. The question is, will you realize the importance of communication and make the commitment to master it?

So, will you?

Did you know there are several different kinds of colorblindness? Some people are completely colorblind, while others are only unable to see red and green, or blue and yellow. Wikipedia states that in the United States alone, about 7% of the male population (around 10.5 million men) has some degree of colorblindness. For this reason, a good design should not rely on color contrast alone to communicate information.

Luckily, there’s a very quick test for seeing if your slides will have sufficient contrast for someone who’s colorblind to be able to understand it. Under the View menu in PowerPoint, there should be an option for Grayscale. By selecting this option, all hues will be removed from the image and you’ll see something akin to total colorblindness. You can now inspect your slides to see if all of the information is still understandable and readable. (You can also achieve the same effect by opening the Print dialog box and choosing grayscale.)

If your design is readable in grayscale, congratulations. Well done. If some elements are unclear or hard to read, you need to find different ways to convey your information.

Color Saturation

One good way to make color contrasts show up in grayscale is to play around with the saturation of the colors. Variations of the same hue will still be visible in grayscale due to differences in saturation, as you can see in the two slides below. If your color choices are not visible in grayscale, play around with the colors until they look good both ways.

These five blues are all shades or tints of the same hue...

...and they're still distinguishable in grayscale.

This is just a real quick solution for identifying and solving design issues related to colorblindness. I’m sure there are other solutions out there. What methods do you use?

“If I am to speak for ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour I am ready now.”

– Woodrow Wilson
Discovered in ‘Resonate‘ by Nancy Duarte

“Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.”

Literally: I made this [letter] very long, because I did not have the leisure to make it shorter.
Translation: I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.

– Blaise Pascal, Provincial Letters: Letter XVI, 1657 (English Translation).
Often misattributed to Mark Twain, as well as T.S. Eliot, Cicero, and others.
Source: Wikiquote