{"id":884,"date":"2012-08-23T21:31:00","date_gmt":"2012-08-23T13:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vm-officeblogs.cloudapp.net\/2012\/08\/23\/powerpoint-2013-presentation-is-everything\/"},"modified":"2022-06-28T10:25:27","modified_gmt":"2022-06-28T17:25:27","slug":"powerpoint-2013-presentation-is-everything","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/microsoft-365\/blog\/2012\/08\/23\/powerpoint-2013-presentation-is-everything\/","title":{"rendered":"PowerPoint 2013: Presentation is Everything"},"content":{"rendered":"
You wouldn’t wear your workout clothes to a job interview, unless of course you were applying as a personal trainer or professional athlete. You would dress your finest, because you want to make a good impression. When you make PowerPoint slides, you are probably trying to sell a product, make a point, or pass a class. It’s not so different from a job interview – you want to look your best. Well guess what? We want to help you look your best.<\/p>\n
When you open the new PowerPoint, you’ll see a start page<\/a> with your recently opened presentations next to a gallery of new themes. In the Customer Preview<\/a>, we’ve included eight newly designed themes, and the release version will have many more. You can double-click any of these to immediately create a new presentation that looks beautiful right from the start.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n If you single-click on any of our new designs, you’ll see something new – a preview of the theme, along with a number of variations on that theme’s style and color. Here’s an example of the “Wisp” theme family, which has four color variants:<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n When we started developing our content strategy three years ago, our designers would send over tons of amazing options for each theme, and we found it extremely difficult to choose just one color palette from the set. We would end up choosing the “safest” option, the one that would cover the broadest set of scenarios and customers, but at the same time would target none of them. For example, if we had to choose only one option, we would never have shipped this inverted variant with bright pink highlights:<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n A great design can be polarizing, which is why in the past we would have avoided this one. Some people would love it, while others would hate it. Or in this case, most people would likely want something more toned down and less pink. However, because we now have theme families, we can cater to individual design preferences without alienating segments of our customer base. We end up with a lot of designs that people love, instead of a few designs that people think are just okay, and in the end that’s going to make a lot of people happy because it’s your presentation and your choice, not ours.<\/p>\n Let’s take a look at another theme called “ION” – here’s the “safe” variant:<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Green is a neutral color, and it plays well on most projectors and screens. Also, the color palette works well on colorful presentations and on blank white documents (like Word documents and Excel spreadsheets). In earlier releases of PowerPoint we would have stopped right there, but in this new version, we get to ship some excellent alternatives – while they might not apply as quite as well to all imaginable situations, they are simply awesome for certain ones. These two, for example, happen to be my personal favorites from the ION theme family:<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n It was always possible to change the color palette, font scheme, and shape effect styles of themes in PowerPoint 2007 and 2010, so what’s really new about the variants in 2013 theme families? First, let me highlight the problems we faced with our old model:<\/p>\n We designed theme families so that variants have complete control over all elements of the presentation’s design – colors, fonts, effects, layouts, text properties, paragraph properties, design elements, and photos and textures. Take a look at Organic, for example:<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n If you change from the Bamboo variant to the Sisal variant, we can swap out the band holding down the paper for rivets, change the color palette and color mappings, and we can replace the background texture entirely, and all you have to do is click once:<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n If you want to switch designs after you’ve already started to build your presentation, simply navigate to the Design tab in PowerPoint, where you’ll find a gallery of Themes right next to a gallery of Variants:<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Every theme in the new PowerPoint is really a collection of designs, and we’ve built those collections in such a way that they can co-exist in the same presentation. Over the last couple years we’ve found that there is a lot you can say with a simple color change. <\/p>\n Whenever we change topics or switch presenters, change the variant color as a way of signifying the switch. It helps the audience remember which section contains what content. To apply a variant to a specific set of slides, select the slides, and then right click a theme icon in one of the galleries. Choose “Apply to Selected Slides”:<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Now two parts of your document can have distinct visual style without deviating from a general aesthetic style:<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n We didn’t leave out advanced users when designing this feature. All of our themes are designed with customization in mind. All the shapes are accessible via the slide master, and all of the theme elements respond to color palette changes where possible (some of the rendered textures, like those in Organic do not). The color\/font\/shape style controls are available on the slide master, as well as in the Quick Access Toolbar. In the release version, we’ve added these controls to the variant drop-down gallery for easy access on the slide level:<\/p>\nNew in 2013: Theme Families!<\/h2>\n
The Power of Theme Families<\/h2>\n
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Use Theme Families to Tell Your Story<\/h2>\n
Advanced Controls<\/h2>\n