The Ultimate Guide to Presentation Resources

The Ultimate Guide to Presentation Resources

By John Rode on November 11, 2010

We all want to tell an engaging story and captivate our audience with stunning slides. But it’s not always an easy thing to do, which is why we’re providing a free guide to creative presentation resources. Use these to get inspired, liven-up your presentation technique, and create fantastic visuals. Tell us about your favorite source for presentation help and we’ll include them in future editions!

Creative Stories and Anecdotes
Nothing will help your audience relate to you and your message more than stories and anecdotes. But sometimes it’s a challenge to find ones that relate to your topic and draw your audience in. Here are some creative presentation resources for developing anecdotes:

Awesome Stories – countless fictional and non-fictional stories in a variety of categories such as famous trials, biographies, movies, history, religion, and sports.

Anecdotage.Com – home to the largest collection of celebrity anecdotes and quotes on the Internet.

Story Arts – an educational Web site with stories to enhance speaking and facilitate improved listening.

Choosing Your Method
Many presenters, particularly novices, struggle to find a presentation style that works best for them. Use the methodology of these leaders as a presentation resource – Incredible Presentations – Presentation Methods. If you’re short on time, here is a summary of the 5 creative presentation methods:

The Takahashi Method calls for simplicity resulting in clarity and attention to the speaker—the use of very large type and few words, or a single image or photo with no accompanying words.

The Lessig Method calls for multiple slides (even hundreds)—each with only a brief quote, a short sentence—delivered in rapid-fire pace to prevent the audience from growing bored.

The Godin Method focuses on selecting striking accompanying visuals to enhance messages appropriately.

The Monta Method emulates the game show style of posing questions and hiding answers to build audience participation and engagement.

Visually Awesome Fonts
Tired of Arial, Times New Roman, and other boring, over-used type styles? Here’s a variety of Web sites and other helpful presentation resources devoted to the creation, sharing, distribution, and use of unique, visually appealing fonts.

Free Internet fonts at Dafont with over 10,000 free fonts matching themes and celebrating holidays; and 1001 Free Fonts is a primary source of free new fonts with more than 30,000 commercial fonts.

Fee-based Font Sites

1.Adobe Type Library
2.Bitstream
3.MyFonts
4.Ascender Corporation
5.FontMarketplace
6.FontSelector
Get the full scoop on fonts from this blog post: Incredible Presentations – Awesome Font Resources

Amazing Video
Many presenters look to audio to enhance their visuals and stimulate the senses. Music and a variety of sounds can help make a presentation memorable. Here are some great presentation resources for adding audio.

Musicshake – allows users to easily create their own music clips using more than 80,000 copyright-free samples.
Royalty-Free – other royalty-free audio presentation resources offering a wide variety of music and other audio include Royalty-Free Music, Presentation Magazine, Audio Micro, and Sound Ideas.
Make Your Own Audio – create your own unique sound using any of several software apps, including Sony, Adobe Soundbooth, Dexster Audio Editor, FX Audio Editor, or Acoustica, which all run about $40 to $60 each. For studio quality sound, try Adobe Audition or Sony Vegas Pro which will cost you several hundred dollars. For free audio programs, try Aviary’s Myna, Audacity or Wavosaur.
Find more audio presentation resources at Incredible Presentations – 5 Amazing Audio Resources.

Getting Inspired
Visual communications, especially presentations, are an opportunity to distill complex information into digestible pieces. Here’s a collection of visual communication blogs to inspire your next great presentation.

Vision Jar – Johanna Rehnvall has a heck of a design eye and a knack for spotting innovative trends.

Duarte Blog – The best collection of storytelling and business communication tips out there.

Note and Point – If you are a presentation designer, you’ve got to check this site every day. The cream of the crop from the presentation world.

Presentation Zen – Garr Reynolds dishes out practical advice so that you can realize your presentation idea in its most beautiful form.

This is Indexed – When standard graphs, venn diagrams, and metaphors just won’t do, this delightful and witty collection of infographics is sure to inspire.

Presentation Tips
And finally, here are helpful presentation resources to leverage when it’s time to give a presentation. Use these to tailor your presentation to specific audiences:

Learn how to produce effective presentations for top management

Find out how to present to venture capitalists and other investors

How to give an amazing product demonstration

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