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Draw to Win, by Dan Roam

If you have already read Dan Roam's bestselling book “The Back of the Napkin”, you know his philosophy of conveying ideas and messages using simple drawings. This is his fourth book, and it’s a kind of “best of” book, summarising the main ideas in a concise form. There’s some repeated material from the previous books, so don’t expect a whole bunch of new stuff. But if you’re looking for a quick guide to sketching out your ideas to cut through the clutter, this is a great start. And if you haven’t read his previous books, start with this one.

The book’s subtitle “A crash course on how to lead, sell and innovate with your visual mind” promises a lot, and if you take this literally, you might be disappointed. This is not really a book about leadership, sales, or innovation. Rather, it assumes you already have some of these skills, and it shows you how to share your ideas with others using drawings, models, sketches, and diagrams.

I think this book is most valuable for people who say, “But I don’t know how to draw!”. Roam explains why that doesn’t matter, and why you don’t need to be a Leonardo or Picasso to create simple ideas that convey a powerful message.

This book is also extremely useful if you’re caught in the “Death by PowerPoint” trap, with presentation slides full of dense blocks of text, long bullet lists, or complex graphs. You know you want to escape this trap, but you don’t know how. Well, this book will show you how.

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