Custom Themes for PowerPoint
It’s easy to spend a lot of time designing your Powerpoint. One of the ways we can really cut down on time is by using custom themes for powerpoint. Themes are collections of fonts, colors and shape effects that stay consistent throughout your whole presentation.
Accessing themes
You’ll find your themes on the Design tab of your ribbon. Click on a few of them to immediately change the look and feel of your entire presentations. You can also hover your mouse over any of the themes to get a live preview. Most of the standard themes are designed so that the colors and fonts are easy to read and pleasant to look at. In general we want our theme to be relatively easy to read because the faster someone can understand your message, the more effective your presentation.
Picking a Theme
When picking a Theme you’ll want to be mindful of your audience and your topic. Who’s going to see this presentation? Do the image or color choices fit with my topic? Do the colors reflect my company? Often we see presentations that look neat but stray from the point of the presentation. As an audience member that can be distracting so try to match the theme with the message.
Customize a theme
If the list of themes available doesn’t have exactly what you want, you can customize your theme. You can change the Colors, fonts and effects of the whole theme. In Powerpoint 2010 you’ll find those options to the right of the Themes gallery. In 2013 you’ll find those options in the Variants drop-down menu. When you’ve made all the changes that you want, find the Themes gallery drop-down menu and select “Save Current Theme”. Name it and Click OK. Now you’ll be able to see it in the themes gallery.
Chelsea Dohem
ann is a desktop instructor for LearniT! She teaches Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook and other essential desktop applications. When she isn’t absorbed in an Excel blog uncovering the coolest new tricks, she’s playing cribbage, learning French or playing a guitar near a campfire. Coming up Chelsea will be expanding her course oferrings to include Microsoft’s Lync, Visio, One Note, Excel Power User, Excel Power Pivot and VBA coding.