This blog is the seventh in a series of blogs on people that have added something important to the world of communications.  Today, my gratitude is for Garr Reynolds. The series is personal and partial, but I welcome nominations for those you think I’ve missed.  I’m grateful to these people because understanding how we communicate is desperately important to bettering our humanity in both business and life.  Miscommunications are sometimes merely irritating, but sometimes fatal.  Business communications are usually banal and boring and only occasionally riveting.  Leadership is tougher than ever – and more than ever about communicating well.  The great business communicators can turn little companies into dominant ones and truly change the world.

Which brings me to Garr.  Garr drew upon his experience of Japan and its traditions to create Presentation Zen, for me the single best book on creating slides, period.  In it, Garr argues for a clean, simple, stripped down approach to creating slides that are both beautiful and communicate beautifully.  If you don’t know it, then you shouldn’t be preparing slides.  The book is that important and seminal. 

Where most business presenters put lots of data on a slide and then argue with it, saying something like, “You can’t see this, but what this shows is that the pigs are growing faster than the sheep.”  A Garr Reynolds slide would show the one number that was important, in a big font, immediately legible, with perhaps a picture of the pigs and sheep in the background.  The viewer doesn’t have to wonder what all the tiny little numbers mean, and the presenter doesn’t have to argue with her slides. 

Garr’s most recent book is The Naked Presenter, and I recommend that too for compelling thoughts on structuring presentations.  But don’t make a move toward that slide software without picking up a copy of Presentation Zen.  The book will help you create the best slides in your company if you’ll absorb its lessons. 

Thanks, Garr.