Jonathan Schwabish’s Better Presentations is a guide for presenters who have to build and share data and information with a broad audience. Although applicable to multiple industries, the focus on academic application makes this the perfect book for universities and organizations that present facts, quantitative content and charts.

The author walks you through the theory of design, how best to build your slides and gives best practices for giving your presentation. His focus is on constructing slides. The book covers three basic slide design types: text-based, chart-based, and image-based.

For text-based slides he explains and demonstrates how to declutter and layer content, write effective headlines, and blend text and visuals. Within the chart-based slides chapter, he demystifies data visualization and shares simple methods that make charts clearer. The Image-based slides chapter demonstrates how to use properly photographs to get a professional looking slide design.

The well-printed, 177-page book includes around 200 examples and illustrations that clarify the points Jonathan makes. The writing is clear and the book is easy to read. He covers some PowerPoint techniques but the book does not concentrate on one tool (although most, if not all, examples appear to be designed in PowerPoint). His best practices are mostly tool agnostic.

The book as a summary of presentation best practices. This is a practical guide for someone that needs to make professional real-world, day-to-day presentations. It is immediately applicable and very helpful—especially for academic topics and content. Learn more here.