Transcript of video:
(00:02) Introduction to Theme Builder
In this video, we're going to talk about the theme builder in Google Slides presentations. It's a way to customize your theme. When you know that you have a specific font style, size, color, those kinds of things that you want to use, you can build that in the theme and then it applies to all of your slides.
And so, it can help you be more consistent throughout your presentation, throughout different presentations. If you apply that same theme to other slides presentations can also improve your efficiency because if you know you're always going to be using those things, which is what I'm doing right now, um it just helps me be um more efficient.
(00:36) Creating a New Slides Presentation
It doesn't take as long to go um and change the um items that you want to change to the font that you know is going to work for you, for your audience, and also meets accessibility guidelines. So, the first thing I'm going to do is create a new slides presentation. I go new Google Slides. I already have one started here.
And so I'm going to go ahead and just title it um my master because I'm going to my master slides because I'm going to try to use this um from now on to help myself be more consistent.
(01:08) Reviewing the Default Theme
So you can see I'm going to click out of templates for a minute. Um if I want to know what theme did automatically open for me here, it was simple light. That's the one that opens for me automatically. And in that the font that is used is Ariel and um the color is black or kind of this darker gray.
Um I don't love Ariel anymore. I used to love it. I don't love it anymore. So I want to change that in my theme. And I also want to change this to black.
(01:47) Opening the Theme Builder
So, what I need to do is go to my view theme builder right there or I'll just show you another way you can do it. You can go slide edit theme and you'll get the same thing. So, either way, you're going to get this popup. And so, on my the very first tile up there is the theme.
(02:08) Changing Fonts in the Theme
And I want to go in there and I want to I want really my entire presentation to have Lexend for the titles and Monzerat for anything else. So I select that. I'm going to change Ariel to Lexend. And I'm because it's going to be a title, I'm going to change it to medium. And it's black already, so I'm good there.
(02:28) Editing Font Levels and Sizes
My first level. So if I have a bullet or just my the first stuff of information, the first part of my body, um, I want it to be Monserat normal, but I want to change that color to black. So I have to come and find my text color, and I want it to be black.
And I also want to up the size. It's 18 right now. I'm going to go up to 24 for my second level.
(03:12) Customizing Layouts
And then I can always go back in and customize it if I need to. But right now I'm just editing the theme. So then with each one of these layouts I could customize it even further. But I don't know if you've noticed it used to be everything was aerial. Now everything is Lexen for a title.
(03:28) Applying the Theme to the Presentation
I'm going to click out for a minute and I'm going to go ahead and give this a title. And it was called my master slides. So, I'm just going to type title here and subtitle just, you know, just changing it so you can kind of see.
And then when I hit return or I can go slide, new slide. Either way, it's going to pull up the layout for title body.
(04:14) Slide Layouts and Titles
All these are title title body ty body title body. So, I'll go back one more time just to show you under the layout when I'm on my first slide. That's the title. And just a reminder on Google Slides, every um Google Slides presentation needs a title slide.
And then every slide needs to have a title.
(04:49) Customizing Section Headers
But I do want to customize it a little bit more. So, I'm going to go back to the theme builder. And what I want to do is take this section header. So, this is one of the styles of the slides for a layout. It's a section header.
So, it might separate my slides into kind of chunks. So, I want to make that blue.
(05:34) Applying ESU10 Brand Colors
And if you watch the color video, you can see how to change those. But we have those hex codes right here. This is on our website. We have this template. And so I'm going to grab those that hex code. I'm going to click color. I'm going to go to custom and I'm going to paste that.
(05:55) Adjusting Text to Maintain Contrast
So now my background is blue, but I don't like this black. The black is um not good on the blue. It does not pass the contrast ratio. So I'm going to change the text to white. And so anytime I have a section, this is what it's going to look like.
(06:14) Creating a “Main Point” Slide Layout
And I'm going to do the same thing to a main idea slide. I might want to have that just to show you how it will look if I use this gold color.
(06:39) Adding Background Images to the Theme
If I want to add a picture to my background, I can do that in this main theme and it will go on all of them. Or maybe I just want to do it one by one.
(07:37) Applying Theme Elements to Multiple Slides
But when I pop out of there, then notice what it did. It put that um image on the title, but it also title slide, but it also put it on all these slides as well.
(07:59) Changing Layouts on New Slides
And it it kept the same layout. That's just what it does when you just hit return or add a new slide.
(08:19) Main Point Slide Example
So you kind of see what all that looks like. And it's part of my theme now.
(08:37) Customizing Individual Slides (Optional)
Um, even though my theme is different, I could change it to orange. Now, I don't know why I would, but I could change it to orange.
(08:55) Naming and Saving Themes
I'm going to go back to the theme builder. This is what I'm working on. I'm going to go ahead and rename it. Um I'm going to just call it demo theme.
(09:21) Importing Themes into New Presentations
So I'm right now I am in this presentation. It's called my master slides. It's in my Google Drive.
What happens if I go to create let's say it's next week now and I'm going to start a new presentation.
(10:04) Import Theme Feature
So I want to change that theme. I have to import my theme that I had.
(10:23) Applying Imported Themes
And here's if I had more than one theme, they would show up here. I just have the one. And so, I don't know if you noticed, but it's lexended and it's black.
(10:51) Editing the Theme After Importing
To get rid of it here, I have to go in and change I have to go in and um edit that theme builder.
(11:10) Using “Make a Copy” as an Alternative
The other way that you can work with your master template like I have here is just make a copy of it.
(11:38) Copying the Presentation as a Template
But I now have a new slides presentation called week three that pulled in that theme because I made a copy of it.
(12:21) Importing Themes from Any Slides File
Maybe one of my co-workers had a beautiful presentation and I want to go ahead and copy that entire theme.
(12:49) Final Notes
So, it's a great way to be efficient, be consistent, also customize it to be super simple.
So um just for a reminder that um anybody on the accessibility team can help you with this. You can visit our website at a11y.ESU10.org and Jason has office hours on Mondays from 8:00 to 9:00.