iWork '09: The Missing Manual

Building Themes from Scratch

Creating a brand new theme is really the same as modifying an existing theme, but with a bit of initial pruning and planning. Start out with just a single blank master slide: Create a new Keynote document from any theme—it doesn’t matter which—and then choose View → Show Master Slides to open the master slide navigator. Delete all of the master slides except for one blank slide (you have to delete them individually, since Keynote doesn’t let you select more than one master slide at a time). Now you have a clear space to build your theme’s foundation.

Create a “Master” Master Slide

To make sure that you keep your background and text styles consistent from slide to slide, it’s a good idea to create a master master slide—a model that you’ll use as the basis for each of the master slides you create. That way you can duplicate this master slide to make new masters, and those slides will automatically inherit this slide’s text and background settings. Get these settings right on this first master slide and you won’t have to change them for subsequent slides.

To get started, select the master slide in the slide navigator. Then, in the Master Slide Inspector:

1. Click the Appearance tab and use the Background pop-up menu to select a color, gradient, or image fill for your slide backgrounds.

2. Turn on the title, body text, and slide number checkboxes to add those text boxes to the master slide.

3. Click the Transition tab and choose a standard transition style, if any, from ...