iWork '09: The Missing Manual

Keynote Theme Basics

Whether your design is baroque or basic, every slideshow is based on a theme, which boils down to a collection of prefab slide designs called master slides, each with its own layout and standard settings (slide background, fonts, object fills, and so on). Master slides lay the foundation for the overall layout and look of each slide in your presentation; you can change the layout of an individual slide by choosing a different master slide from the toolbar’s Masters pop-up button. If you later edit a master slide’s layout or settings, the changes automatically appear on all the slides based on that master.

When you edit a theme, you’re really just editing its master slides—updating the layout or background, adding a logo or copyright notice, switching the standard colors of its charts, and so on. You can also build a theme from the ground up, creating new master slides from scratch.

To work with a theme’s master slides, you first have to open the master slide navigator. In the toolbar, click the View button to Show Master Slides, or, in the slide navigator, drag the Slides pane separator, as shown in Figure 16-1. The navigator shows thumbnails of all of the master slides for the slideshow’s theme—the same thumbnails that show up in the toolbar’s Masters menu.

Master slides have a few special features, but for the most part, they look and work just like regular slides when you edit them. Select a master slide in the navigator, and Keynote displays it on the slide ...