Picture This

I am fantastically obsessed with great design. I’m not a designer by any means, but I’ve come to realize that the ability to put together fantastic visual communication tools can now be a reality for us all. Actually, let me correct myself: it's an absolute necessity for us all. 

Whether you’re putting together a presentation, building a chart or graph, or trying to pitch a concept to a manager or client, your communications can drastically improve with the use of some basic visualization concepts. 

Quite conveniently, I just put together this list of my favourite presentation/visualization resources for a friend and colleague of mine. Yes I realize that there are a LOT of links and that some of these you’ve likely heard of, but hopefully you can find a new gem or two in here!

• Duarte Design blog, headed by Nancy Duarte who wrote slide:ology. Duarte was contracted to revamp all of the TED presentations this year and they wrote a post with their tips from TED here. They also have a list of recommended books, many of which I'd also highly recommend (as you'll see below...).
• Back of the Napkin by Dan Roam. Very practical and a fun, easy read. His blog is here.
• Gene Zelazny, ex-McKinsey guy who invented the powerpoint slide, has written a number of great books on presentations and slide design. I’ve used both Say It With Charts and Say It With Presentations extensively as training tools and I would highly recommend both. 
• Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds: phenomenal book + phenomenal blog. 
• David Armano put together a powerpoint on Thinking Visually. Some good tips/concepts. I'm a keener for his blog too.
• Harvard offers a data visualization class and posts all of its course materials here. 
• Swissmiss is an all-star with a blog full of tips, resource recommendations, and samples of great design. Highly recommended as well. 
• Flowing Data has some fascinating examples of data visualization which I believe very clearly demonstrate the value in effective communications, especially in presenting data and helping people understand concepts.  

And a little extra to help you get through all of this: 10 days to faster reading by Abby Marks Beale & Roxy Allen.

Happy visualizing! 

Comments

[Paulina]

Love all of these :) Here's 50 amazing examples of visualizing information and processes: http://tinyurl.com/cecttt

[Roxy]

Hey thanks for the mention! These are really good resources you have here.

[Paul Pettengill]

As someone whose job is to create data visualizations everyday. No data visualization list would be complete without Edward Tufte and Stephen Few.

[NJ Thompson]

I don't know how I could have forgotten Tufte! Thanks for the tip Paul!

[Skangerland]

It's a different take on design, but I'd recommend Dan Lockton's Design With Intent blog, too:

http://architectures.danlockton.co.uk/