Creative Coding for the Visual Arts

Year
2025
Category
Course design
Role
Course designer — curriculum, lessons, visual identity
Tools
Curriculum designp5.jsFigmaSlide design
Visit the live course →
Course design 05

Draft copy — refine to match how you’d describe it. Screenshots of the lessons go in public/projects/; set cover: and list more under gallery:.

The brief

A self-paced online course introducing creative coding to visual-arts students with no programming background. The goal: get a beginner from a blank canvas to making generative work, learning by running code, not reading about it.

What I designed

  • Curriculum — the arc from first createCanvas() to generative composition, paced so each lesson adds one idea.
  • Lessons & slides — every concept paired with a live, editable p5.js sketch the student runs and tweaks in-page.
  • Assessment — short quizzes that gate progress, so a lesson only completes when the student gets it.
  • Visual identity — the look of the course: type, colour, and the in-browser editor theme.

Process

Outlined the learning arc, wrote each lesson as slide + runnable sketch + quiz, then designed the template so new lessons drop in without redesign. Tuned examples to fail gracefully — a beginner’s mistake should produce something interesting, not a crash.

Outcome

A live, paid course that runs entirely in the browser. Visit the live course above.

← All work