Brand Charts with Custom Themes

Brand Charts with Custom Themes

Ensure your charts adhere to company colors by creating and applying a custom theme. 

When to use

We create a custom theme whenever we want to quickly apply the same colors, fonts, and effects across multiple charts in any workbook. 

Instructions

In this lesson, we are going to create our own custom theme with branded colors so that our charts are consistent in their look and feel.

We saw in a previous lesson that we can change the color of our chart by clicking the Change Color drop-down on the Chart Design tab and selecting the desired color palette.

The colors we see in this drop-down are controlled by the theme we are using in Excel.

By default, Excel uses the standard Office theme.

Check the Theme

Let’s check the theme we are using.

• From the Page Layout tab, in the Themes group, click the lower-half of the Themes button.

The theme highlighted in gray is the theme currently in use.

Create a Custom Color Palette

Many companies will have their own set of branded colors that need to be used in charts to create a consistent look across all assets. We can create our own theme with a customized color palette to make it quick and easy to apply our branded colors to any chart.

• From the Page Layout tab, in the Themes group, click the drop-down next to Colors.
• Click Customize Colors.

We can now update the relevant fields with our own colors.

• Click the drop-down arrow next to Accent 1.
• Click More Colors.

From here we can select a color from the Standard or Custom tab.

Alternatively, if we have the specific hex codes we can type those in on the Custom tab.

• Click OK.

Repeat this process for Accent 2, Accent 3, etc.

• Once complete, give the new color palette a name e.g. “your initials – custom colors”.
• Click OK.

The new color palette will be added to the Custom area at the top of the Colors menu.

• Apply the new colors to the chart.

Save As a Theme

Once the changes have been made to the chart, we save the new colors as a theme and reuse the theme on any chart we create.

• From the Page Layout tab, in the Themes group, click the lower-half of the Themes button.
• Click Save Current Theme.

File Explorer will open the default Document Themes folder to save into.

We recommend that you save your theme in this folder and not elsewhere.

• Type a name for the theme.
• Click Save.

Apply the New Theme

We can now reuse our theme on any chart across any workbook we create.

• From the Page Layout tab, in the Themes group, click the lower-half of the Themes button.
• In the Custom group, select the theme.

Hints & tips

• Themes can contain more than just theme colors. We can also customize the fonts in use and the effects and add them to the overall theme.