iWork '05: The Missing Manual

Chapter 12. Customizing Keynote

When you create Keynote presentations, you hardly ever start from scratch with a blank document—Apple's collection of themes sees to that. But if you tire of those designs there's an ever-expanding number of themes available for purchase or for free. If you're a dyed-in-the-wool do-it-yourselfer, you can even start from scratch and create your very own themes—or you can start with a theme you like, and customize it for your own use.

Keynote Theme Basics

Keynote's easy to use thanks to the built-in themes that let you start creating slides quickly, and concentrate on their content instead of their layout. Apple's collection of themes offers a good starting point, or you can modify those master slides for your own needs, and do things like change the backgrounds, the fonts, or add a logo or copyright notice. You can also build a theme from the ground up, creating each master slide from scratch.

Each master slide holds a collection of the following preconfigured attributes:

• Title and body text box position

• Background fill or graphics

• Standard fonts

• Standard bullet styles

• Standard object positions for charts, tables, and images

• Fills and line styles for shapes and tables

• Chart style

• Slide transition style

• Alignment guides

If you want to modify master slides, you have to first open the normally hidden Master Slides organizer. In the toolbar, click the View button to Show Master Slides, or, in the Navigator, drag the Slides pane separator, as shown in Figure 12-1.