Presentation skills: Designing Presentation Slides

Tomsk State University via Coursera

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This course may be unavailable.

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Provider

Coursera
Pricing

Free Online Course (Audit)
Languages

English
Certificate

Paid Certificate Available
Duration & workload

4 weeks
Sessions

Finished
Subtitles

Arabic, French, Portuguese, Italian, German, Russian, English, Spanish

Found in

Part of

Presentation Skills: Speechwriting, Slides and Delivery

4.3

Overview

“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 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 it 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.

Syllabus

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.

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).

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.

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.

Taught by

Alexei Kapterev

Reviews

4.8 rating, based on 849 Class Central reviews

Start your review of Presentation skills: Designing Presentation Slides

Alejandro Correa Paris @acorreap

very straight forward and easy to follow.
I only gave it 4/5 because the quizzes and exams don’t always properly evaluate the objectives of each part of the course.
great teacher, he’s a down-to-earth person and gives good advice for non-experts.
i definitely recomend this course. both for beginners and more advanced users who want to improve.
Anonymous

Excellent course. Probably the best designed course I've taken on Coursera and I've taken a lot of them. The presentations are interesting, entertaining but very educational. The quiz at the end of each chapter is not a push-over quiz, you actually have to go through the material to pass it, and finally the practice assignments are a real way to apply what you learned so you just aren't learning it academically but you put it into practice so the learning is real! Thank you so much for producing this course I greatly appreciate the amount of effort it must have taken to put this together so well.
Ronny De Winter @RonnyDeWinter

Great course, great and funny instructor, great resources! Powerpoint is both the best and worst invention of a business tool. So many presentation slides are overloaded and look so amateuristic that they completely miss the point, and don't influ…

Great course, great and funny instructor, great resources!

Powerpoint is both the best and worst invention of a business tool.

So many presentation slides are overloaded and look so amateuristic that they completely miss the point, and don't influence the audience.

This course is independent of the tool you use, the practices are applicable to Powerpoint, Keynote, Google presentation, ...

Bring what you learn immediately into action. On top of the supplied exercises, take your own slides, either the ones you created lately or one you have to create for your next presentation. Gradually improve them. You will be very satisfied if you compare the end result with your original attempt.

After this course, you'll be able to better communicate your case with a presentation to an audience of any size.
Anonymous

I didn't always agree with the teacher's design suggestions, but that's understandable, because design is subjective and trends change. I loved how passionate he was, and how he was open about the fact that he's not a professional graphic designer.…

I didn't always agree with the teacher's design suggestions, but that's understandable, because design is subjective and trends change. I loved how passionate he was, and how he was open about the fact that he's not a professional graphic designer. I think that was reassuring in a way, because he emphasized that you don't have to be a career designer to create good design. Even when I disagreed, I still really valued his perspective and he gave me a lot to think about. I decided to sign up for the course instead of just auditing (highly recommended so you actually practice the principals he teaches), and it was interesting seeing my slides develop from beginning to end.

My only gripe is the peer-reviewing. While I loved the opportunity to see other students' work (sometimes it gave me more ideas, and a broader perspective), it was clear that some reviewers were not spending much time to consider my work - they docked points, but then just wrote "good" as a comment. (Meanwhile, I made sure to write detailed comments on how my peers could improve their work.) I failed one project twice without getting any clarity on why people were docking me, since some of the rating criteria was subjective/generic (such as "is the text they chose cliche?" or "does it look professional?"). One time I just re-uploaded the same exact slide and went from fail to full points.

My advice: keep the peer-reviewed assignments, but make it an automatic pass. Give reviewers more open-ended question fields so they can put more thought into it for both students' benefit.
Badar Muneer

Well, I would recommend this course to everyone who in one way or other uses Powerpoint presentation whether you are a student or a professional. Everyone should have design sense. Every university in the world should have some courses on design for all students irrespective of their majors. Although i was using PPTs in university but i realized the design importance when I started a job where substantial amount of my work involved working on PPT. I really needed a course to learn and I guess I did find a very good course and that free of cost :) Well, I applied for financial support and coursera team was kind enough to grant me.

Well done.
Anonymous

fantastic course, great presentor. I wish I had been able to take that course at the start of my career, 30 years ago.
What I like most about the course is how the presentor develops a typical ugly slide into something appealing in a step-by-step approach.
Interestingly, most of the steps are about REMOVING, not adding elements, such as color, decoration and so forth.
Highly recommended for anyone who has to produce, present or look at slides.
Anonymous

One of the easiest ways to start your journey in slide-design.One of the easiest ways to start your journey in slide-design.One of the easiest ways to start your journey in slide-design.One of the easiest ways to start your journey in slide-design.…

One of the easiest ways to start your journey in slide-design.One of the easiest ways to start your journey in slide-design.One of the easiest ways to start your journey in slide-design.One of the easiest ways to start your journey in slide-design.

One of the easiest ways to start your journey in slide-design.One of the easiest ways to start your journey in slide-design.One of the easiest ways to start your journey in slide-design.One of the easiest ways to start your journey in slide-design.

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One of the easiest ways to start your journey in slide-design.One of the easiest ways to start your journey in slide-design.One of the easiest ways to start your journey in slide-design.One of the easiest ways to start your journey in slide-design.

One of the easiest ways to start your journey in slide-design.One of the easiest ways to start your journey in slide-design.One of the easiest ways to start your journey in slide-design.One of the easiest ways to start your journey in slide-design.

One of the easiest ways to start your journey in slide-design.One of the easiest ways to start your journey in slide-design.One of the easiest ways to start your journey in slide-design.One of the easiest ways to start your journey in slide-design.
Sourabh Bhandary

This was my first Coursera course. And i must say I'm off to a great start. I loved this course everybit. I learnt so much about design.
The only problem i had was getting reviews on time. And I think the instructor also needs to review his student's assignments.
Thank you. This course was worth the time.
Zain Sajid @zain170700

I complete this course in less than a week. It's really very interesting course. He is not a professional design but teaches very professionally on creating high skills in presentation. This is one of the best course on coursera. I will recommend it to all who pursue their career in business. This will really beneficial you.
Md. Mahadi Hasan Maruf @muhammad

The course teacher is really great. His learning style is very good and easy. The course teacher is really great. His learning style is very good and easy. The course teacher is really great. His learning style is very good and easy. The course teacher is really great. His learning style is very good and easy.
Ana Fabien @Anamae

This was my first completed course on Coursera and it did not disappoint. It was informative, educational and presented in such a way that anyone could understand. I would definitely recommend this course to anyone who wants to improve their presentation skills.
Anonymous

It was enjoyable, funny, full of amazing information and so great quotas.
It was amazing course, focusing on the beauty , balance , smooth and clear presentation.
I am really so lucky to find it and learn with each slide of it how to make my slides more professional and easier to read, and how to make my solutions more beautiful.
Thanks a lot for it , I really enjoyed it
Harshit Omar @harshitomar

Excellent course. Completely changed perspective about design, and how we can communicate to different audiences. Also, realized the futility of using default Powerpoint options to design meaningful and 'unique' presentations.
Anonymous

The worst course I've ever seen! It's more like a person throwing random ideas here and there, without deeply explaining certain steps or methods to apply those ideas. I mean, I'm a slides-design virgin -and many of the course students are as well-.…

The worst course I've ever seen!
It's more like a person throwing random ideas here and there, without deeply explaining certain steps or methods to apply those ideas. I mean, I'm a slides-design virgin -and many of the course students are as well-. however, the lectures give us tips as we are already designers and we want to improve our skills. I've learnt nothing except that using icons in my slides gives it a quiet cool appearance. that's all. I've regretted the time I've wasted on this course. They'd rather show us more examples, so that we understand how things work, and when I say more examples, I mean examples for every single video and topic, and not for a SINGLE video from each week, because examples are what makes us learn best.
The lecturer is supposed to be a presentation expert. however, his "emm"s are so so so many that irritates me, and this is one of the main good presentation skills, not to "emm" or "ahhhh" a lot. Another thing is that the way he addresses his subject. It's like he is reciting ideas instead of teaching. I hated it.
Linda Ghayeghvar

Presentation skills: Designing Presentation Slides was a very useful Coarse for me. I enjoyed and learned a lot. There are lots of easy to understand examples. The topics were chosen carefully. I will consider all the good tips i have learned in my future powerpoint design.
Anonymous

Recommendation: Absolutely YES Really helpful course with many, many, many... aspects from design and typography thinking way that help me, doing my job even better. In front of this, I believe that I am already a design-oriented, professional frequ…

Recommendation: Absolutely YES
Really helpful course with many, many, many... aspects from design and typography thinking way that help me, doing my job even better. In front of this, I believe that I am already a design-oriented, professional frequent presentation designer with good feeling for 'good' / informative design, helping digesting complex information towards decision making support for top manygers. However, there were so many little "aha" in that course I really appreciate and that teached me so many things on top :-)

Conclusion:
For professional presenters that want/need/looking for to improve their skills in transporting complex information in a professional and easy way to read, you need to join Alexei's course anyhow.

Thank you for your top level course here, Alexei!
Abrahan García

Well I think that it's an appropiate course for those who already know how to make presentations in any software, and are looking for new ideas to improve their slides. The teacher explains each topic in an easy way to understand and use some examples to clarify. In my experience I really learned some technics to improve my presentations, because let's say it, mine were old too fashioned. I strongly recommend this course to anyone, and I just would like to say that the quizzes must be a little shorter. Thanks very much.
Anonymous

I started this course because this so much relatable to my studies and my future carrier as well. I am so glad that I choose this course to follow. this course was really helpful for me to understand and lots of new things that actually I never known But I should really know.
How ever I have covered lots of areas about presentation making. about colors choosing, typefaces, photographs, page balancing, what icons should used, about tables, how to minimize decorations, how to make our slide professional.
So I have learned all of these things and etc. I am really glad to learn from this lecturer. Thank you very much sir and Thank you very much Coursera.
Anonymous

I enjoyed this course as a non-designer person with no previous design knowledge ( however partly informed about the design thinking for entrepreneurs). I truly enjoyed Alexei using the design principles to guide us through the course. I did not pa…

I enjoyed this course as a non-designer person with no previous design knowledge ( however partly informed about the design thinking for entrepreneurs). I truly enjoyed Alexei using the design principles to guide us through the course.

I did not pay the fee, and thus could not access the exercises on Coursera since my current situation does not justify doing so. I mostly took notes, and re-considered my previous presentation experience while I was watching videos. I believe if I had paid the fee, and accessed the exercises I would have remembered more vividly; however it is still ok to take this course theoretically.

I would say Alexei is wonderful, and his course is simply great. It is the very first time in my 10 career years that I learned what typography is, what design (basic layout) means , and how I can use powerpoint and keynotes to prepare a simple but professional looking slides. It matters that someone teaches the things nobody teaches, and we struggle ourselves by experience- good and bad. Impressions are important.

I am an academician, not business person, so I need slightly different layouts in my class teachings; however this fact does not affect my learning from Alexei. I came to think that writing an academic paper is also a design work. In general developing designer eyes is likely to improve all parts of my life ; it uplifts, enlightens.

Thanks Alexei for your elegant style, nice explanations and excellent further learning sources ( e.g. TED talk, book links, recommendations on where to find icons, drawings). It was pleasure to have taken your course. I can come back, ( probably) pay when my situation allows, and take other courses from you.
Sahar Iqbal

I found this course very interesting...and the credit goes to instructor....

His teaching style is very engaging....

He used simple language n helps to illustrate very practical points from real life examples..

The way he divided the the subject in weeks n assignments were perfect...

I especially enjoyed the learning in week 3 & 4...about icons and image usage ..how we can design a well balanced and composed slide..

Tips about Data visualization is also very helpful....

Thanks to instructor and Coursera team ..

I really recommend this....

Regards