Creating a Blank Presentation
When you start PowerPoint, click on New. Click on the option to create a Blank Presentation. A blank presentation has a white background and black text without any additional design elements.
By default, the presentation only contains a title slide. You can click on the text boxes and type in your own text. To add a slide, click on the option for a New Slide and select the type of slide you want. Any new slides will also have a white background and simple text boxes.
Customizing a Presentation
Once you have added some content to your blank presentation, you can manually make changes to the various design elements. For example, you can modify the background. Select the Design ribbon at the top and click on the Format Background option. This allows you to select various types of backgrounds, including a solid fill, gradient fill, and several other options.
Once you have found an option you like, you can click on Apply to All to apply the current background style to all the slides in the presentation. You can select any of the elements on your slide and change their design. For example, to change the color of the text in a textbox, select the textbox, select the Home ribbon at the top, and apply a different color.
Variants and Themes
Changing all the elements one-by-one is very time-consuming. Instead, you can use a number of tools to apply changes to all your elements.
Let's look at the Variants first. Select the Design ribbon at the top. In the Variant options toward the right, click on the downward arrow to see more options. Here you can change things like the colors and fonts of your presentation. For example, if you select a different font, this will apply to all the textboxes on all your slides.
Similarly, if you select a different set of colors, this will apply to all the elements on all slides, including textboxes and background. Variants change fonts and colors, but not the general design. Themes, on the other hand, not only change fonts and colors, but also many of the other design elements.
In the Themes option towards the left, click on the downward arrow to see more options. When you select a particular theme, all the design changes are applied to your presentation. Variants and Themes change the look and feel of your presentation, but not the actual contents. If you have typed in your text and added some graphics, all of these will remain in place. So you can create some basic content first and then modify the design as you go along.
Lesson Summary
You can start a new PowerPoint presentation by creating a new blank presentation from scratch. All slides will have a white background and simple text boxes. You can apply a design style one element at a time, and then use the Apply to All option to apply that style to all elements of that type. You can also use Variants and Themes to quickly change the design of all the elements in your presentation.
Learning Outcome
This lesson will teach you how to apply basic design elements to a blank PowerPoint presentation. You'll learn how to manually customize your presentation and use Variants and Themes to make desired modifications.
