PowerPoint 2016 is loaded with features and themes that you can apply to your visuals to give your presentations clarity and make them interesting. Your goal is to gain the attention of your audience and to make sure your audience grasps what they see and hear.
The presentation theme is a set of design elements that include colors, fonts and effects that give your presentations a unique look. Since, the advent of themes in PowerPoint, you no longer have to worry about setting a particular font size or keeping your format consistent as themes will do all that work for you.
All of the PowerPoint themes have a set of colors, fonts and effects built in. By selecting a specific theme, your presentation will be formatted with the predefined combination of colors, fonts, and effects of that theme. Even the blank presentation has a theme, known as the Office theme, which comes with a white slide background and a standard set of text and accent colors. However, there are approximately 30 built-in Office themes for PowerPoint that you can choose from.
PowerPoint has many built-in themes to choose from.
It’s also easy to quickly change the look and feel of a theme or template by using variants in PowerPoint. Each theme has variations where the fonts or colors have been changed that you can apply to your presentations with just the click of the mouse. You can also customize your presentation by applying different theme colors, fonts or effects as desired.
Another nice feature of themes is that you can apply them to your entire presentation, to only one slide in the presentation or to a whole section of the presentation. You can also create your own theme or use colors, fonts and effects from other themes if you wish.
Apply a standard theme to the entire presentation.
- From the backstage view, click on New
- Click the Blank Presentation thumbnail
- Click on the Design Tab > Themes Group and click on the More button to launch the Themes Gallery. Hover your mouse over the different themes to preview the changes to your slides.
- Click on a theme of your choice. Below we select the Wisp theme. This theme will be applied to your presentation.
Change the Color Scheme of the Presentation
If you like the design of the theme but would like a different color scheme, it’s very simple to change the look and feel of your slides using Variants.
- Click the Design tab > Variants group and click the More button.
- On the Variants menu, click Colors. You will see the available color schemes gallery appear
- On the Colors menu, click a color scheme of your choice. In our example, we chose the Blue Green color scheme
Change the font Set of the Presentation
It’s also possible to change the font set of your presentation. There may be times when you may want a more bolder font or perhaps your company requires a specific font type. Changing the font set or the color scheme will not change the actual theme that is applied to the presentation, just it’s look and feel.
- Click the Design tab > Variants Group and click the More button to view the Variants menu. Note: The More button will disappear once you launch the Font gallery
- On the Variants menu, click Fonts
- On the Fonts menu, click the font set of your choice. In our example we selected Calibri.
Changing Theme Effects
Lastly, there may be times when you want to use theme effects. These affect the preset shape styles that you can apply to your shapes or SmartArt graphics in PowerPoint. These effects can also be applied from the Format tab whenever you select a shape or SmartArt graphic.
Practice: – Apply a Theme in PowerPoint
- Click File > New and open up a presentation template of your choice
- Apply the Facet theme which fits the theme of the subject of the presentation. Make sure you preview all the other themes first
- Select a Color variant of your choice that matches the theme
- Choose a Font variant of your choice.
- Your presentation will look something like the following: