Tip: Create a Unique PowerPoint Themes in 68 Seconds with Designer
About this lesson
This training video demonstrates how to create unique and visually appealing PowerPoint themes quickly using the Designer tool. With just a few clicks, you can transform a blank presentation into a customized slide deck with new backgrounds, fonts, and layouts. The video emphasizes starting with a blank presentation and using the Designer tool from the Design Ribbon Menu to explore and select design options.
The tutorial further explains how Designer fundamentally changes the presentation’s structure by altering the Slide Master settings, ensuring that the chosen theme is applied consistently across all slides. The video showcases how to modify individual slides using the Designer tool while maintaining the overall theme’s coherence. Additionally, it provides insights into managing background graphics, color schemes, and font selections to enhance the presentation’s look.
Finally, the video covers the essential requirements for using the Designer tool effectively, such as having the latest version of PowerPoint Office 365 and starting with a completely blank presentation. It also introduces the Slide Master feature, which controls the design rules for the entire presentation. Viewers are encouraged to explore the Slide Master to make further customizations and watch related tutorials for more in-depth learning.
Topics
- 00:32 The 68-Second Trick
- 02:56 What Elements Were Modified
- 07:25 The Cool Bonus Trick
- 09:56 The Rules to Make This Work
- 10:53 Slide Master
Details
Subject Microsoft PowerPoint
Software Compatibility
Level
Course Completed
PDF Files There are not any files associated with this lesson.
TRAINING SERIES VIEW ALL
Subscribe
Remember to subscribe to our YouTube channel by clicking the AUTO SUBSCRIBE! button below
Subscriptions help us create more free video training for YOU!
Transcript
Unique Designs Transcript
0:03
The latest version of PowerPoint can create a unique, a fresh or spectacular look in about 60 seconds with just four mouse clicks. Make your presentation design theme stand out from the crowd. Let’s build a new theme, like the one displayed behind me with just a few mouse clicks. And afterward, I’m gonna dig deeper into how this magic works. I have PowerPoint already open on my Windows PC. But this works the same on my Mac. Start the clock. Step one is to click on File, then click on “Blank Presentation.” Don’t touch the slide, leave it empty, go to the Design Ribbon Menu, and then go all the way to the right and click Designer and explore your visual choices on the right side of the screen. Pick one, and you’re done. And for good measure, I’m going to add a second slide using the home Ribbon Menu to show the magic. The second slide follows the matching color font graphics and Layout Scheme of the first new slide. This is a new theme. Unlike other old PowerPoint tired themes. Look, I’ve got bonus time on the clock. So let’s do it again. Undo it all and start over. blank presentation. Designer Ribbon Menu. Designer action icon and explore your choices. Click and done. Stop the clock. I promised you one unique theme in around 60 seconds. But I exceeded my goal by giving you not one, but two different presentation looks, it was just that easy. And to prove they didn’t just create a pretty title slide, but instead fundamentally changed the structure of the presentation, I’m going to add a second slide and show that it truly has altered the underlying master rule set with a new look, a color scheme and font selection. And yes, I’m going to discuss the concept of Slide Master at the end so that you can control these changes. Hi this is Les from Power Up Training. And this cool tip is a hidden gem that is going to do so much much more than just creating a pretty picture. Do stay tuned to the end for a bonus trick and the requirement rules to make this magic happen. But first, let’s see all that was transformed with a simple four clicks of the designer offerings. Some of the changes are immediately noticeable such as the visually striking title slide with color and flair. The designer tool, which was earlier called Design Ideas, has been transforming single Slides for years. But following this new trick, we’re now fundamentally changing the various elements of the full slide deck, not just a single slide, starting with the background. Let me right click on an empty space to get the menu choice of background. I clicked background to get the choices on the right side of my screen. The designer tool made two separate changes the background color, and an added a background graphic ornamentation. Looking at the background color is not too radical. In fact, the choice is a plain gray. This will not always be the case in other offerings, as they’re often more colorful backgrounds. But this subtle gray does work for this theme. However, to cccccbggfjgitngebibvkuuvnnglvbfenjbikcengbnj
4:16
highlight what was impacted I’m going to change it from gray to this brick red blush color and it becomes obvious which is the background color and which is the added graphic elements and explain more about colors in just a moment. Because the color palette has been changed by our designer click But hang on. In addition to the background color choice, the designer will often add graphic embellishments watch this element disappear. If I click Hide Background graphics, the embellishment disappears. And then I turn it back on to show what designer added based on our original single click Selection. Once again, each designer layout will have a unique background set of elements. In addition, the designer choice will change the default font family for the new collection of Slides. For this specific example, designer has chosen Avenir Next LT Pro for the bullet point and Posterama for this slide title. The original blank presentation before designer transformation was the use of the plain Calibri light, which a PowerPoint standard presentation font, but it’s become boring and an overused choice. These two new bold typography selections are choices I would never have discovered on my own. Importantly, they flow consistently through this one of a kind presentation deck on each new slide. Another total change that is not always obvious is the revamping of the color scheme. Once again, the original blank presentation is based on the default Office color scheme. But if I look at the color choices, by changing the font, I get a whole new collection of complementary colors based on a newly created color palette scheme that matches the colorful slide look and complements the background. Another design element of color selection that I never would have put together on my own. This underlines the level of exacting details that are applied based on a few clicks to select the designer look. All in all, it is pretty amazing. All the work done by the single click designer tool. Lastly, designer may or may not change the standard layout placement of the slide. In this choice, we have our normal look with a slight title on top and the bullet point placeholders in the middle down below. That’s not always going to be the case. Sometimes Design Ideas will place the titles on either side of the slide, left or right and even on the bottom. But, before we go any further, I want to show you one more cool trick. This is my promised bonus tip. Some supporting slide layouts may become a bit boring or repetitive in look. But you could always go back on a slide by slide basis and have designer offer up more choices for just that one slide. It does not change the whole presentation, but it jazzes up the single selected slide for a variety of looks. What is both subtle and cool is that these new designer choices are now constrained to the color palette and font choices of the whole presentation so that our fancy new slide still fits the overall look and feel of the bigger collection of Slides. Now that you know what’s happening, let’s take another look at the process and better appreciate the changes. But don’t go away. We still need to see when this design theme, one click does not work. So again, always start with a blank presentation and go to the Design Ribbon Menu and the designer action icon. In this selection, the title is put at the top corner. And it also forces the font to be all caps using Avenir Next font family. The second example uses a pink flowered theme background and a super casual cartoon bubble font with matching graphics, which is carried through to the second slide that I just added. However, using our bonus tip of altering a single slide, just one, with designer, it takes the concept even further. If we use designer to customize the following page, we get more comic bubbles to match our first slide.
9:40
This is eerily clever. So that you get the idea that we can access what seems to be like unlimited number of variations and matching variations inside of variations. Oh wow. But now to the warning Here are the rules that make sure that this works. Number one, you must be running the latest version of PowerPoint Office 365. And while Microsoft keeps changing the rules, most likely, it must be the paid subscription version. Number two, you must start with a blank presentation, keep it completely empty. Number three, you can only have a single layout slide, not a second slide, you add that in designer will not alter the whole presentation, you will break the ability to create a new theme. So my recommendation is to perform the designer look as your very very first step on an empty blank presentation. Lastly, let’s see where this magic is happening. I’m switching back to my earlier presentation. All the modifications were made with a single click of designer and are stored in something called the Slide Master. To see it, go to the View Ribbon Menu, and then click Slide Master icon to reveal the coded ruleset. Here’s where the master parents slide resides, and all the children layouts that follows the rules, font families colors, text, placeholders, and backgrounds are all controlled here. In the Slide Master View where the individual layouts are managed. Note to escape out of the Slide Master View, look for the Close Master View icon. While it is not required. If you want to learn how to make changes to the Slide Master. Then watch my Power Up Training called Learn PowerPoint Slide Master tutorial. Otherwise, go create some awesome looking PowerPoint presentations. Do Subscribe and Like until next time, Go Power Up!