About this course: “Powerpoint slides are like children: no matter how ugly they are, you’ll think they’re beautiful if they’re yours” — Scott Adams, author of the comic strip “Dilbert”. Due to this cause or another, it’s a huge stress to look at most Powerpoint slides. Depending on the “design” skills of the speaker and audience’s taste slides create different emotions from a slight annoyance to a physical sickness. But that is not the worst thing. The worst thing is that instead of improving the presentation such slides confuse the audience, distract them and finally oblige the speaker to explain them rather than being quite self-explanatory. The goal of this course is to change that by equipping learners with a set of tools to create simple, clear and aesthetic slides which improve the presentation of the speaker. The course covers universal design principles, templates, colors, typefaces, slides’ typography, use of photos and pictograms, composition rules and ways to create clear and meaningful charts and diagrams. This course is not a PowerPoint fundamentals course. You should have a basic knowledge of either Microsoft PowerPoint or Apple Keynote software. Don’t meddle, make your slides matter.
Created by: National Research Tomsk State University
Taught by: Alexei Kapterev, Lomonosov MSU BS
| Basic Info | Course 2 of 4 in the Presentation Skills: Speechwriting, Slides and Delivery Specialization |
| Language | English |
| How To Pass | Pass all graded assignments to complete the course. |
| User Ratings |
Syllabus
WEEK 1
Part 1: Key principles of design
This week is about key principles of slide design. Non-designers usually can’t tell a good slide from a mediocre one. If they could we wouldn’t have had so many bad slides all around us. So this week we are going to fix this by learning the key principles of slide design.
7 videos, 4 readings, 2 practice quizzes
- Video: Trailer
- Reading: We want to stay in touch with you ^_^
- Video: Introduction
- Video: Too much text
- Video: Too much decoration
- Video: Priorities in design
- Video: Design Principles
- Video: Principles in Action
- Discussion Prompt: The Earth without Art is just "eh"
- Practice Quiz: Slides' purpose
- Practice Quiz: For the most curious
- Reading: Redesign
- Reading: External links
- Reading: The slides
Graded: Test for week 1
Graded: Fix a slide
WEEK 2
Part 2: Templates and colors meaning
This week is about templates, colors and fonts. What's wrong with most templates? Which page decorations should you use to make your slide look beautiful? (None!) What information can we pass through the colors? How to choose a typeface? Does a proper typeface make all the difference? (Yes, it does).
11 videos, 2 readings, 1 practice quiz
- Video: Templates
- Video: What’s wrong with the templates
- Video: Background
- Video: Page decorations
- Video: Colors meaning
- Video: Colors: Black & White
- Video: Colors: Yellow, Green and Blue
- Video: Choosing a typeface
- Video: Traditional vs Contemporary
- Video: Warm vs Cool
- Video: Examples
- Practice Quiz: Practice quiz
- Discussion Prompt: Less text-more context
- Reading: External links
- Reading: The slides
Graded: Test for week 2
Graded: Fix a template
WEEK 3
Part 3: Typography and photographic illustrations
This module is about typography and photographic illustrations. Applying basic typography rules allows making decent looking slides only with text. The same goes to tables. If that’s not enough there are icons — do’s and don’ts of them when you try to spruce up your text-only slides. And finally using photos and vector arts to create really gorgeous stunning slides. Basic rules on how to search them on photo banks, how to combine them with text, when icons should be used instead of photos and vice versa.
9 videos, 2 readings, 1 practice quiz
- Video: Typography
- Video: Advice on typography
- Video: Typographical composition
- Video: Tables
- Video: Typographic illustration
- Video: Using icons and photographs
- Video: Pictograms
- Video: Vector art
- Video: Photographs
- Practice Quiz: Practice quiz
- Discussion Prompt: Did you enjoy it?
- Reading: External links
- Reading: The slides
Graded: Test for week 3
Graded: Redesign a text-only slide
Graded: Add icons to a text-only slide
Graded: Illustrate a proverb with a photo
Graded: Add a photo to a slide with icons
WEEK 4
Part 4: Diagrams and data visualization
This week is about typography and photographic illustrations. Applying basic typography rules allows to make decent looking slides only with text. The same goes to tables. If that’s not enough there are icons — do’s and don’ts of them when you try to spruce up your text-only slides. And finally using photos and vector arts to create really gorgeous stunning slides. Basic rules on how to search them on photobanks, how to combine them with text, when icons should be used instead of photos and vice versa.
9 videos, 3 readings, 1 practice quiz
- Video: Types of diagrams
- Video: Hierarchy diagrams
- Video: Process diagrams
- Video: Relationships diagrams
- Video: Data visualizations
- Video: Column and bar charts
- Video: Line charts
- Video: Pie charts
- Video: Closing remarks
- Reading: Please rate this course on Coursera and Class Central
- Practice Quiz: Practice quiz
- Reading: External links
- Reading: The slides
- Discussion Prompt: Now you're more of an expert!
Graded: Test for week 4
Graded: Create a diagram from a text
Graded: Convert table to a chart
Graded: Redesign a presentation
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Creators
National Research Tomsk State University
National Research Tomsk State University is the largest classical university in the Asian part of Russia. For over 135 years TSU has been training the scientific and managerial elite, based on the integration of academic process and fundamental scientific research. It is a renowned center of education, science, innovations and attraction for creative talents, a generator of advanced ideas, and a paragon of adherence to the best traditions of Russian higher education.
There are 23 departments and learning institutes, 1 University branch, Institute of Distance Education, Institute of Innovations in Education operating at TSU, and more than 17,000 students studying at the University, with 135 subject areas and specialties to choose from. TSU offers 136 Master’s programmes in 55 areas of academic studies and counting.
The number of international students is constantly increasing, now with more than 1300 TSU students coming from countries such as the USA, UK, Germany, France, Australia, Italy, Poland, Mongolia, China, Vietnam, Korea, Columbia, Turkey and others.
Pricing
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| Access to course materials | Available |
| Access to graded materials | Available |
| Receive a final grade | Available |
| Earn a shareable Course Certificate | Available |
Ratings and Reviews
This was first course and I must say I am fully satisfied. The quizzes and project work made it practical as without that it would have been only theoretical.The level of depth in explaining how the slides should be designed was quite brilliant. Now I can definitely good slides from bad ones. Slowly i should be able these myself.
Make the most of this course, guys, it's super nice!
Can't help asking-will there be more to this course? You should continue doing the great job, guys. It's very informative and helpful!
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Best course on the topic I have taken so far.