Creating Your Very Own Keynote Theme

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About this lesson

This lesson will guide you through the process of creating and sharing your very own Keynote theme.

Quick reference

Topic

This lesson will guide you through the process of creating and sharing your very own Keynote theme.

When to use

If you work with Keynote in an organization, it’s a great idea to create and share your own designed theme for employees to use. This lesson will help you to know the options that are available as well as going through the motions of creating and sharing your own Keynote themes.

Instructions

Before we get started, we should have our theme already designed, including all the images, transitions, animations, fonts, styles, etc. My recommendation would be to make these changes in the Master Slides.

There are two ways to convert a Keynote file into a theme.

  1. We can convert it to a theme and add it to our own Theme Chooser window
  2. We can convert it to a theme in a way that allows us to share it with others

To convert to a theme and add to our own Theme Chooser window:

  • Go to File > Save Theme…
  • Choose the “Add to Theme Chooser” button

To test this option, try creating a new Keynote file choosing to use our new theme from the My Themes tab.

To convert to a theme to share with others:

  • Go to File > Save Theme…
  • Choose the “Save…” button
  • Give the theme a name and location

This will create a new Keynote theme file that we can email.

Use case: you work in a company with a sales team that gives presentations regularly. The Marketing department creates a theme just for the sales team to use and then distributes that to the team to use on all presentations going forward.

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  • 00:00 When we choose to create a new keynote file,
  • 00:04 we are presented with various themes to choose from.
  • 00:09 These themes are beautifully designed by artists that are brilliant at
  • 00:13 what they do.
  • 00:14 But, wouldn't it be nice if we could create our very own keynote theme and
  • 00:17 have that accessible in the same theme chooser window?
  • 00:20 Well guess what?
  • 00:21 We can.
  • 00:22 Before we set our new theme in stone we first want to make sure it looks
  • 00:26 just the way we want it to.
  • 00:28 That may include a custom background,
  • 00:29 custom images, custom fonts, styles, etcetera.
  • 00:33 Because this will be a theme that we can use for ourselves or
  • 00:35 to send to others it would wise to make these changes in the master slides
  • 00:39 rather than on a single slide itself.
  • 00:42 If you're not sure how to do this spend a few minutes to review the lesson entitled
  • 00:46 working with master slides.
  • 00:48 Once we have our slide deck designed exactly how we want it,
  • 00:51 it's time to convert that to a theme.
  • 00:53 We have two options when doing this.
  • 00:55 The first option would be to convert it to a theme and
  • 00:58 then add it to our own theme chooser window.
  • 01:01 To do this, we go to file and choose save theme.
  • 01:05 Next, we choose to add to theme chooser by clicking this button.
  • 01:11 At this point, we are prompted to give our new theme a name or
  • 01:14 confirm the existing name and that's it.
  • 01:17 To see what this will look like for us, let's quit Keynote and
  • 01:20 reopen it choosing to create a new file.
  • 01:23 Instead of selecting one of Apple's themes,
  • 01:26 let's click the third tab called my themes, and select our very own theme.
  • 01:31 Is that wild or what?
  • 01:33 Okay.
  • 01:34 Now that we have added our own theme to our own theme chooser window,
  • 01:37 let's walk through how to send this theme to a friend or colleague to use.
  • 01:42 With our theme open, let's go back to File and Save Theme.
  • 01:46 This time, we will choose the Save button.
  • 01:48 On the surface, this looks very similar to a typical save process, but
  • 01:52 there's one key difference.
  • 01:54 After we have given the theme, a name and a location, let's save the file.
  • 02:00 With this new file being a theme, the icon will look and
  • 02:03 ultimately act a little different from a normal Keynote file.
  • 02:07 To show you what I mean, let's quit Keynote again.
  • 02:10 This time, let's double-click on the new theme file.
  • 02:14 We are now prompted to either create a new presentation using this theme or
  • 02:18 we can add it to our own theme chooser window.
  • 02:21 It doesn't make a lot of sense for us to do this if we've already added
  • 02:24 it to our theme chooser but it makes a lot of sense for
  • 02:27 someone else in your organization to add it to their theme chooser.
  • 02:30 Here's a classic use case for doing this.
  • 02:33 Let say you work in a company with 20 salesman who are constantly designing and
  • 02:37 delivering presentation to clients or customers.
  • 02:40 In an effort to solidify the company's branding,
  • 02:42 the marketing department has created their own Keynote theme, and distributed that
  • 02:47 to each of their sales team members asking them to use that custom theme on any and
  • 02:52 all slide decks going forward.
  • 02:54 Not only would this theme include the company logo, but
  • 02:57 it can have a set of predefined charts, objects, fonts, and
  • 03:01 colors to choose from when adding these objects.
  • 03:04 Can you imagine how streamlined this could make that process for
  • 03:07 your sales staff, and how uniform it makes the organization look to your customers?
  • 03:12 Creating your own themes could be extremely powerful.
  • 03:15 Do you have what it takes to create your own theme?
  • 03:18 Take some time right now and give it a try.

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