“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.
Priorities in design
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来自 National Research Tomsk State University 的课程
Presentation skills: Designing Presentation Slides
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National Research Tomsk State University
135 个评分
课程 2（共 4 门，Specialization Presentation Skills: Speechwriting, Slides and Delivery）
从本节课中
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.
与讲师见面
Alexei KapterevLomonosov MSU BS
Structure comes first, decoration, second.
Which brings us to a larger question of, what are the priorities in design?
Maybe there are lots of other things we should be
thinking about when we are designing slides.
And let me show you a few pictures from the world of industrial design.
But I promise you, it's more or less the same.
For slides, the considerations are more or less the same.
Thing number one.
What do you think is the key priority here?
And many people say, well it's a beautiful pen but
I think that this is not the most important thing here.
The most important thing that this is a cheap pen.
This is a very cost effective design and I think this was the single most important
thing, the designer was thinking about when he was trying to create this.
And it is always important to remember there are always those time constraints or
financial constraints.
As a consultant client base for my time.
You're probably employed, which means that your employer is paying for your time.
Even if you're a student, there are alternative ways you can spend your time.
So the design you are doing costs something, and
you should be thinking about costing.
It mostly has to do with time, we do not use any costly materials.
The second consideration would be, are we trying to communicate status?
And sometimes we do, but in slides, very rarely so.
If you're working for some, I don't know,
investment bank working with VIP clients, then your slides will probably
have bright background and golden text.
But oftentimes it's just white background.
We are not trying to design exclusive art here.
For one thing, we do not access to any materials.
We don't have access to gold or now this wood.
All we have is just screen, paper.
But secondly, we're not artists.
We are designers.
We try to design practical things, we do not try to design art.
If you're trying to design art, maybe you've chosen the wrong profession.
Not a consideration as far as lives are concerned.
And many mistakes stem from people trying to create something which
looks too good for the task.
Next thing is fun.
This is a fun pen.
Banana pen, bananapen.
This is a definition of creativity.
Creativity is when you combine things from different domains and
get unexpected and cool results.
And this is a consideration in our design.
Decoration is about fun, we're trying to make things prettier, livelier.
More sort of interesting to look at.
This is about creating eye candy, visually interesting slides,
which is always a consideration.
And thing number four is functionality, practicality.
This is not a very cheap pen.
This is not a very expensive pen, either.
This isn't a beautiful pen, it's just a functional pen.
It's a pen which is very convenient for writing, it is optimized for writing.
And I think this is the key thing, this is what we should be trying to accomplish.
We should solve problems with slides, we should reach goals.
This is our main consideration.
Try to make functional things, try to make functional slides.
As far as I'm concerned, structure is about form follows function, right?
Structure is about supporting functionality, so begin with that.
And as always, if you try to create things which are both cheap but
look expensive, they're fun and functional.
Well sometimes you get stuff like this.
So I think you have to have your priorities straight.
What is the most important thing for you now?
And sometimes it is cost effective, and sometimes it is just price, but
sometimes it is fun.
And sometimes it is functionality.
Personally, I often default to functionality.
I try to reach goals with my slides.
Couple more examples from the world of architecture.
This is cheap and cheap could be ugly.
And this is fine, by the way, because this is not a consideration.
This is, of course, very beautiful, and it takes an artist to do that.
So always a question, are you an artist?
Why should we be thinking about beauty as slide designers?
This is fun.
This is actually a fun building, even though it's a grey box.
And this is a practical building and its purpose is to make things easier
if you are defending yourself in, I don't know, 15th century probably.
It doesn't work in with 21st century,
it's beautiful in 21st century rather than practical.
But it used to be a practical building.
So there seems to be a conflict between practicality and beauty.
Many people seem to believe that a practical thing cannot be beautiful and
a beautiful thing could not be practical, and it is often true.
But sometimes it is not.
There are a quite a few very notable exceptions.
And of course this is not a product of design, this is a product of evolution.
But it's just so very hard to find things which were not designed in
our everyday lives and this is a beautiful and a very practical thing.
It reaches its goals, it solves its problems and
at the same time it is very beautiful.
And I think what we should be trying to create,
we should be trying to create things like this.
Another example is a war plane, I'm sorry for
those military things, but once again it's very hard to find
things which were not designed to be beautiful.
And beauty is obviously not a consideration here.
It just is beautiful because it's just so optimal, because it's just so functional.
So here's a quote from Bucky Fuller, an American architect and designer.
When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty.
But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.
So we should be using beauty as a criterion but
we should not strive to create beautiful things because well,
we tend to get off course if we look for beauty rather than for functionality.
We are designing practical things.
So as far as I'm concerned, my priorities are frequently like this.
I try to create practical, functional designs.
I try to create designs that are readable.
Now that facilitates information transfer.
Secondly, fun.
Fun is important.
Well, we have to be alive, [LAUGH] and often this is my mistake,
I under-appreciate fun.
Because of the pressure of being cost-effective.
And cost-effective is always a consideration.
If you move cost-effectiveness just one step up, your design will become boring.
And finally, I don't try to create beautiful things, but
rather I try to create things that look professionally, which is important for
both me and my clients.
And sometimes those priorities move, but often this is how they are.
And I think you have to think for yourself.
And of course I will be very glad if you move functionality to the first position.
I think this is the single most important thing
if you are creating design as supposed to art.
