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Whether you are a university professor, researcher at a think tank, graduate student, or analyst at a private firm, chances are that at some point you have presented your work in front of an audience. Most of us approach this task by converting a written document into slides, but the result is often a text-heavy presentation saddled with bullet points, stock images, and graphs too complex for an audience to decipher--much less understand. Presenting is fundamentally different from writing, and with only a little more time, a little more effort, and a little more planning, you can communicate your work with force and clarity.
List of contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I. Designing Your Presentation1. Theory, Planning, and Design
2. Color
3. Type
Part II. Building Your Presentation4. The Text Slide
5. The Data Visualization Slide
6. The Image Slide
7. The Scaffolding Slides
Part III. Giving Your Presentation8. Presenting
9. The Technical Nitty Gritty
Conclusions
Further Readings
References
About the author
Jonathan Schwabish is a senior research associate at the Urban Institute's Income and Benefits Policy Center. He is also a member of the Institute's communication team, specializing in data visualization and presentation design. He has published widely in economics journals, including the
National Tax Journal, the
Journal of Human Resources, and the
Journal of Economic Perspectives. He is the coauthor, with Robert Haveman and Andrew Bershadker, of
Human Capital in the United States from 1975 to 2000: Patterns of Growth and Utilization (2006). He can be found on Twitter at @jschwabish.
Summary
Designed for presenters of scholarly or data-intensive content, Better Presentations details essential strategies for developing clear, sophisticated, and visually captivating presentations. With a range of clear examples for what to do (and what not to do), Jonathan Schwabish shares the best techniques to display work and win over audiences.
