The Say It With Charts Complete Toolkit

Gene Zelazny

McGraw Hill Professional, Dec 7, 2006 - Business & Economics - 312 pages

The Complete Do-It-Yourself Kit for Creating Powerful, Interactive Presentations

Master presenter Gene Zelazny has shown thousands of professionals around the world how to design and deliver successful presentations. Now, he combines his bestselling Say It With Charts with his Say It With Charts Workbook into one comprehensive volume-complete with an all-new CD that lets you download and implement Zelazny's potent PowerPoint charts, graphs, and visuals!

This first-of-its-kind Toolkit reveals time-tested tips for putting your message in visual form and translating data into eye-catching, persuasive charts and multimedia presentations. Zelazny offers step-by-step advice on selecting and preparing the right charts, emphasizing key points, and encouraging your audience become active participants. He also shows you how to use today's digital technologies to create easy-to-follow, attention-grabbing visuals. Nowhere else will you find such comprehensive, authoritative information on:

• The different types of charts for any presentation
• Audience-tested techniques for communicating information
• Hands-on recommendations for lettering size, color, appropriate chart types, and more
• Techniques for dramatic eVisuals using animation, scanned images, sound video, and links to pertinent websites
• Tactics for customizing graphics to specific audiences

Contents

• Say It With Charts: 1
• Choosing Charts: 9
• Using Charts: 73
• Say It With Concepts and Metaphors: 129
• Play It With Charts: 195
• Index: 295

Popular passages

Page ii - Choosing the correct chart form depends completely on your being clear about what your message is. It is not the data — be they dollars, percentages, liters, yen, etc. — that determines the chart. It is not the measure — be it profits, return on investment, compensation, etc. — that determines the chart. Rather, it is your message, what you want to show, the specific point you want to make.

Page 296 - Frank didn't realize is that a chart used in a visual presentation must be at least twice as simple and four times as bold as one used in a report. It's the same as the distinction between a billboard that must be read and understood in the time you drive past it and a magazine advertisement that you can study in detail.

Page 266 - Develop a service-orienied central administration that excels at supporting schools. • Maximize the dollars used to improve student achievement. • Enable and energize parent and community involvement. • Strengthen die partnerships between DCPS, city agencies and community-based organi0 C Pubic Schools Did you know.

Page 1 - In an item comparison, we want to compare how things rank: are they about the same, or is one more or less than the others? For example: H In May, sales of Product A exceeded those of Products B and C.

Page 31 - In other words, do the chart and the title work together; does the chart support the title; and does the title reinforce the chart? So, if I say in my title that "sales have increased significantly," I want to see a trend moving up at a sharp angle.

Page 31 - I want to see a trend moving up at a sharp angle. If not, if the trend parallels the baseline, it's an instant clue the chart needs more thinking.

Page 91 - Only the bottom layer is measured directly from a fixed base. All other layers are measured from a changing base, and their size can be gauged only approximately.

Page xii - In a component comparison, we are interested primarily in showing the size of each part as a percentage of the total. For example: H In May, Product A accounted for the largest share of total company sales.

Page 284 - Last, many, many thanks to all of you who have assisted in making this book a reality.

About the author

Gene Zelazny is the Director of Visual Communications at McKinsey & Company, where he has provided creative advice to thousands of professionals for over forty years. He has lectured at many of today's top business schools, including Columbia, Harvard, Michigan,, INSEAD, Sloan, Stanford, Tuck and Wharton.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Say It With Charts Complete Toolkit
• Author: Gene Zelazny
• Publisher: McGraw Hill Professional, 2006
• ISBN: 007163116X, 9780071631167
• Length: 312 pages
• Subjects: Business & Economics / Business Communication / Meetings & Presentations