Apply and change a theme

Imagine you have created slides for your presentation, and now you are thinking about slide design -- the look of the slides: the background design, font styles, colors, and layouts.

You want the slides to have a bit more visual pop. How do you get that?

Now is the time to explore themes.

A theme provides a complete slide design for your presentation.

Let's look at some examples.

To find themes, click DESIGN. The different themes are shown by these thumbnails here.

When I point to a theme, it previews on the slide.

To see more themes, click this middle arrow, which shows the themes, row by row.

I'll point to some to show their previews.

To see the full Themes gallery, click this bottom arrow, called the More arrow.

To apply a theme, click one of the thumbnails.

The theme is applied to all the slides.

Some details of this theme include a colorful background, an artful design for the slide number, and font styles.

You see a color scheme applied throughout and a range of layouts.

The aim of a theme is to give your presentation a designer-quality look, with all the slide elements coordinated.

Another way to apply a theme is when you first open PowerPoint to start working on a presentation.

In this opening view, you are shown all the themes from the Themes gallery.

You'll notice that one of the choices is this very basic design, labeled Blank Presentation.

This also has a theme applied, just a more plain one.

A helpful aspect of this view is when I click a theme, I see a larger example of it, and I can click More Images to see more examples of its color scheme and layouts.

I also see three additional choices of background designs and color schemes for the theme.

When I click one of these, I see its preview.

This is one way that PowerPoint offers alternatives, to help you get the theme you want.

I'll try this blue version of the theme, which is called Ion.

When I click Create, PowerPoint applies the theme to the new presentation, starting with the first slide.

When I click New Slide, the new slide takes on the theme.

An advantage of starting out with the theme in place is that I see how it looks with my slide content as I work.

If I want to try a different theme, I click DESIGN, and apply another one from the gallery.

Now, may be, you are someone who prefers a more plain slide design.

To start with that, apply the most simple theme: the Office Theme.

This is the theme PowerPoint applies when you choose Blank Presentation from the opening screen.

Fun is when you start with this basic theme and customize it.

PowerPoint gives you several ways to change any theme's design.

To start with, you have the three alternative backgrounds and color schemes over here, in Variants.

And when you click the More arrow, on the lower-right here, you have more options for altering the theme.

Within Colors, there is a range of other color schemes available.

Within Fonts, you'll find other font combinations for the title and body text.

When I point to fonts in the list, notice how they preview on the slide.

Effects offer subtle style differences for graphics, like shapes.

And Background Styles include more background colors - some light, some dark - that go with the current color scheme.

If you alter some aspect of your theme and you want to save it for future use, open the Themes gallery and click Save Current Theme at the bottom of the gallery. Then, save the theme with a new name.

The customized theme now appears with all the other themes in the gallery, available for use with other presentations.

Up Next: Change the theme background.