Changing Themes and Colors

Quick reference

• 00:04 Even if you're really good at presentation, designing can take so
• 00:07 much time to do.
• 00:07 And if you're in a hurry, it's often best to use whatever
• 00:10 design features you can extract out of PowerPoint.
• 00:13 I think that many people don't realize that PowerPoint itself is both a good
• 00:16 graphic design program, as well as contains lots of templates and
• 00:20 features that allow various elements in the presentation.
• 00:23 Such as graphics, colors, and objects to be very well balanced.
• 00:28 In this video, we're going to look at themes in PowerPoint to apply formatting
• 00:31 to various parts of our presentation.
• 00:34 In a way, that will help us to understand how these themes work.
• 00:38 On the design tab, we can see the preview thumbnails of various themes.
• 00:42 And notice as I move my mouse over the thumbnails our active slide
• 00:46 updates on the fly, and shows us how the changes will affect the slide.
• 00:51 At this point of time, no changes actually have been made.
• 00:54 If we click on a particular theme, we can apply that theme to our current
• 00:58 presentation, and that immediately updates our whole presentation in terms of
• 01:02 background graphics, effects, fonts and possibly even the capitalization
• 01:07 of lines of text within placeholders, if that setting has been enabled.
• 01:12 As well as text within placeholders, as well as colors.
• 01:17 So let's do some work.
• 01:19 The little instructions that we have here ask us to apply the Facet theme.
• 01:24 So, dropping down the little more button, this is Facet, click, and
• 01:29 we notice that the whole presentation is immediately updated.
• 01:33 We've also been asked to change the variant, and
• 01:36 variants are subsets within a particular theme.
• 01:40 So, we have in this instance a green, blue, pink, and a very dark one.
• 01:46 So, we will select the blue variant, and it's applied to the whole presentation.
• 01:52 Within variants we have the option of changing colors,
• 01:55 the various fonts, the effects that would be applied to shapes within
• 01:59 the presentation as well as the background style.
• 02:03 So, in our instructions we are asked to change the colors to green,
• 02:07 yellow and moving across here it is.
• 02:11 While we're in this particular area, we will explore colors a little bit further.
• 02:16 As we update the colors we effectively update our whole presentation through
• 02:20 the applied theme.
• 02:22 We click the customize colors menu item and a dialogue box pops up and
• 02:26 shows us the colors within that particular variation.
• 02:29 The contrast between a light and dark background and a light and
• 02:33 dark text and various accents and so on.
• 02:38 We've noticed that the results were expressed in the thumbnail
• 02:40 preview including the bars of our charts, and
• 02:44 so we can save this as we wish or just reset it.
• 02:46 I would suggest that you need to be fairly adept at Graphic Design before mucking
• 02:51 with the settings here, but
• 02:53 notice particularly these top four colors of the light, dark text and backgrounds.
• 02:58 These are exactly the same as the top, which is the light and dark
• 03:02 background styles in the background styles gallery that we will look at later on.
• 03:07 So, this is where they derive from.
• 03:11 We've also been asked to change our presentation to calibra fonts.
• 03:14 Notice as I move over these various selections,
• 03:17 the fonts change on the preview of our slide.
• 03:20 Notice also that there are two fonts available in each font theme.
• 03:25 The top most font is used for titles, and the other font is used for
• 03:28 everything else.
• 03:30 So, if you select a font theme that has the same top and bottom,
• 03:34 that will be reflected consistently throughout your presentation in all text.
• 03:38 So, we apply the font and our entire presentation changes.
• 03:42 We can check that font has been applied by going to the home tab.
• 03:45 We have been asked also to change the effects to an extreme shadow.
• 03:52 Notice that the shapes on the slide change their format as I move my mouse over
• 03:56 the thumbnails.
• 03:57 I select Extreme Shadow, and the presentation is updated.
• 04:00 Finally, we've been asked to apply a Background Style, so
• 04:04 the Background Styles affect the background of our slide.
• 04:08 And if we go to a very dark background the text is still visible, and
• 04:11 if we go to a very light background the text is still visible.
• 04:15 So, remember again how these derive form those settings in the color guide log box.
• 04:20 We select style 7 and apply in the presentation as updated.
• 04:24 Now a quick of a feature just released on the office 3 6 5 version
• 04:29 of Powerpoint 2016.
• 04:30 Let's insert a picture.
• 04:33 Insert from the library on my computer, then go back to the design tab.
• 04:38 The design ideas on the design group, again if you dont see this,
• 04:42 you dont have the Office 365 version, and we can try various design ideas
• 04:47 that have been programmed into this version of PowerPoint.
• 04:50 Now only templates built into PowerPoint by Microsoft currently support
• 04:53 this feature, and I understand the feature will improve as updates are provided for
• 04:57 the office 365 version.
• 05:00 So, using themes and variants allows us to update the whole style of our presentation
• 05:03 quickly, and adjust works.
• 05:05 It's very clear and readable, and easily able to be seen by our audience.
• 05:10 So, themes are well worth exploring and using within PowerPoint.
• 05:13 That doesn't mean you'll never need a graphic designer, but
• 05:16 there's an awesome amount of work that you can do in PowerPoint all by yourself, and
• 05:20 when it gets to the screen or print, it will work.
• 05:23 Remember also that there are many themes and
• 05:26 templates that you can access from within PowerPoint off the Internet.

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