Creating a Theme from an Apple Theme

Starting with one of the Apple Keynote themes makes creating your own theme much easier because you have a foundation of master slides to build from. From there, you can simply add graphics on top of the existing theme, or use it as a starting point for your own custom work.

Apple includes anywhere from 11 to 17 master slide layouts in each of their Keynote themes ( Figure 14.1 ). Sticking with those layouts and names to begin with is usually a good idea, because it makes things easier for the user : they can switch themes in the middle of building a presentation, and as long as the master slide names match, the user's slides will use the equivalently named master slides in the new theme. You can add more master slides to your custom theme.

Figure 14.1. Apple includes between 11 and 17 master slide layouts in every theme, but you do not have to use all of them in your custom themes.

The Apple theme you might want to choose as a starter theme is the White theme. This theme is basically a blank slate, and it provides an excellent framework for your custom work.

Before you get started, you need to understand an important fact about Keynote files. There are two types of files: presentation files and theme files . These two types of files have different file extensions: .key and .kth , respectively. In earlier chapters, you've been working with .key files. Now, you will begin the process of creating the custom theme file in a presentation file. At the end of the process, when your theme is complete, you will save the presentation file as a theme file. Keynote can then recognize the new theme file as a template from which to build new presentations.

Keep in mind that when you are creating a theme file, all of your modifications must be made to the master slides , not to the presentation slides in the file. If you make your changes to the presentation slides, your custom theme will not work.

To choose your starting theme

1.	Choose File > New, or press . The Theme Chooser appears.
2.	Click on the theme you want to use as your starting point.
3.	From the Presentation Size pop-up menu, choose the size theme you want to make the default choice.
4.	Click the Choose button. Keynote takes a moment to build the theme, then creates the new document window, using the first master slide in the theme.
5.	From the View pop-up menu in the toolbar, choose Show Master Slides. The master slides appear in the Slide Navigator ( Figure 14.2 ). Figure 14.2. To edit a theme, you'll have to display and work in the master slides, not the presentation slides.
6.	Click on the master slide called "Title & Subtitle." This is the master slide where you will start making your custom modifications.

Tips

• Chart colors and textures are two of the most finicky parts of creating themes. Starting with a theme that already has the font or chart colors (or textures) you want to use can save you time as you build your theme.

• If you plan to make your theme in both sizes, you can create slide images sized at 1024x768 and just shrink them in Keynote to 800x600. Shrinking things gives you better results than scaling them larger. Otherwise, you might have to create two versions of every image. Simply save your theme at the larger size, change your presentation size in the Document Inspector, and save another theme in the new size.

Building More Than One Size of a Theme

If you plan to create more than one theme size, start with the larger size first. You can then save a copy and resize the copy using the Slide Size pop-up menu in the Document Inspector. Unlike the first version of Keynote, Keynote 2 properly resizes all the objects on a slide when you choose a different size for your presentation. You might have to tweak a few things, or double-check that all your slides look exactly how you want them to before saving your theme. Also, don't feel locked into making every version of your theme exactly the same. Since the 800x600 format is so much smaller than the 1024x768 format, feel free to add some variation to that size so it doesn't feel like simply a shrunk version of the larger theme. An example would be to crop the background of a slide to fit the smaller size instead of shrinking it.