Chapter 3: Handling Slide Backgrounds
In This Chapter
Looking at themes and background styles
Weighing your theme, background, and color choices
Selecting and customizing themes
Placing a solid color, gradient, clip-art image, texture, or picture in the background
Selecting a theme or background for some but not all of the slides
From the audience’s point of view, this chapter is the most important in this book. What your presentation looks like — which theme and background style you select for the slides in your presentation — sets the tone. The audience judges your presentation right away by the first slide it sees. Seeing that first slide, audience members make a snap judgment as to what your presentation is about and whether your presentation is worth watching closely. As you fashion a look for your presentation, what you’re really doing is declaring what you want to communicate to your audience.
This chapter explains how to fashion the appearance of slide backgrounds. It examines what you need to consider when you choose colors and designs for backgrounds. You also discover how to select and customize a theme, and how to create your own slide backgrounds with a solid (or transparent) color, a two-color gradient blend, a clip-art image, or a picture. Finally, this chapter looks into how to change the background of some but not all of the slides in a presentation.
Looking at Themes and Background Styles
What a presentation looks like is mostly a matter of slide backgrounds. When you create slide backgrounds, you start by choosing a theme. A theme is a “canned” slide design. Themes are designed by graphic artists. Most themes include sophisticated background patterns and colors. For each theme, PowerPoint offers several alternative theme colors, fonts, and background styles. As well, you can create a background of your own from a single color, a gradient mixture of two colors, or a picture.
To help you decide what kind of slide background you want, the following pages briefly look at themes and background styles.
A look at themes
Figure 3-1 shows examples of themes. Themes range from the fairly simple to the quite complex. You would have a hard time designing themes as sophisticated as the ones in Figure 3-1 on your own (although Book VII, Chapter 2 explains how to create themes). When you installed PowerPoint on your computer, you also installed a dozen or more themes, and you can acquire more themes online from Microsoft and other places, as I explain later in this chapter.
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Figure 3-1: Examples of themes. |
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A look at background styles
After you select a theme for your presentation, you can tweak it a little bit. You can do that by choosing a Background Style or by creating an entirely new background of your own. Figure 3-2 shows examples of backgrounds you can create yourself. If you’re the kind who believes that simple is better, your presentation is a candidate for a self-made background style. Self-made backgrounds are not as intrusive as themes. The risk of the background overwhelming the lists, tables, charts, and other items in the forefront of slides is less when you fashion a background style yourself.
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Figure 3-2: Examples of background styles (clockwise from upper-left): plain style, gradient, solid color, customized radial gradient, clip art, and picture. |
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The background styles you can create yourself fall into these categories:
Solid color: A single, uniform color. You can adjust a color’s transparency and in effect “bleach out” the color to push it further into the background.
Gradient: A mixture of two colors with the colors blending into one another.
Clip art: A clip-art image from the Microsoft Clip Organizer.
Picture: A photograph or graphic.
Design Considerations
These pages offer you advice about choosing background colors for your presentation. Your color choices for your slides say a lot about your presentation. Better keep reading.
Setting the tone by your color choices
More than any other design decision, what sets the tone for a presentation are the colors you select for slide backgrounds. If the purpose of your presentation is to show photographs you took on a vacation to Arizona’s Painted Desert, select light-tone, hot colors for the slide backgrounds. If your presentation is an aggressive sales pitch, consider a black background.
Every color has different associations. To my mind, blue represents calm, equanimity, and vastness, the characteristics of the ocean. Purple is the color of wealth and opulence (the kings of Europe always wore purple). Within the same color, a change in luminosity or fluorescence can mean different things. For example, a light, luminous red is associated with warmth, but a flat, dark red indicates danger. Light green reminds me of a stroll in the country and makes me feel at peace, but dark green — perhaps because I associate the color with banks and money — represents authority.
There is no universal color theory for selecting the right colors in a design because everyone is different. You can’t consult a color formula chart as you choose design colors because everyone has a different idea of what a color means or suggests. The only way to choose colors is to rely on your intuition. Make a cup of tea, put yourself in a relaxed state of mind, stare at the computer screen, and ask yourself, “What does this color say to me?” Book I, Chapter 4 goes into more details about selecting colors, and souls far braver or more foolish than I have attempted to formulate color theories matching different colors to different emotional states, but the question of choosing colors always falls to the individual. Follow your intuition. It will lead you to the right background color choices.
Carefully selecting the background colors
First, some good news and some bad news. The good news is: Changing a slide’s theme takes only a matter of seconds. Choosing a background style is easy. And experimenting with different colors on your own isn’t very hard, either. With a few simple commands, you can change the background of your slides and observe the effect. You can test many different backgrounds until you find the best one.
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To see what I mean, suppose you select a light background color for your slides, as shown by the slide on the left in Figure 3-3. Later, being fickle, you change your mind and decide that the slides in your presentation could do with a dark background. With the change in backgrounds, dark text gets lost in the dark background, and the graphic on the slide sinks into the background as well, as shown by the slide on the right in Figure 3-3. You have to go back into your presentation, change the tables and graphics, and create or select new ones. You have to start all over. Gnashing your teeth and pulling your hair, you work late into the night, and the next day you behave like a grouch on account of sleep deprivation.
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Figure 3-3: Changing backgrounds can have dire consequences. |
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As mentioned previously, PowerPoint themes are designed by graphic artists. Themes are elegant and sophisticated looking. But a theme with many colors and lines can overwhelm the graphics, charts, and tables on the slides, rendering them hard to see and understand. Figure 3-4 shows the same slide with two different themes. In the slide on the right, the theme overwhelms the chart, making it hard to read, and the title of the chart is completely drowned by the slide background.
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Figure 3-4: Don’t let the theme overwhelm the presentation itself. |
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Choose a theme carefully if you decide to go with a theme for your presentation. Many are tempted by a theme’s rich colors and razzle-dazzle, only to discover later that the theme has devoured the presentation such that the presentation is about the theme, not about the presentation’s subject.
Starting with a sample presentation
Here’s a suggestion for solving the slide background dilemma: Create a short sample presentation with five or six representative slides and test it against different themes and background styles. To begin, make a list of the elements that will appear on the slides in your presentation. For example, if your presentation will include charts, write “charts” on the list. Put all the elements — graphics, tables, bulleted lists, diagrams, and so on — that will appear in your presentation on the list.
Then make a sample slide for each element on the list. Don’t go to great lengths to format the slides — they have to be representative, not perfect. The object is to see what different elements look like against different themes and background styles.
Finally, apply background styles and themes to your sample presentation and see what happens. Click the Slide Show button to see what full-blown slides look like. Switch to Slide Sorter view to get a look at all the slides at once. Push your chair away from your desk and imagine that you’re watching the presentation from the back row of a conference hall.
Testing themes and background styles this way, you can find the theme or background style that stages your presentation in the best light. You can get the background decision out of the way early. You can confidently start constructing your presentation knowing that the background-design decision is done, and the formatting you do to lists, tables, graphics and so on will work with the background you selected.
Making a Theme for Your Presentation
I call it “making a theme” because after you initially select a theme, you can do one or two things to customize it. These pages explain how to find and select a theme for your presentation and diddle with a theme after you’ve selected it. By the way, you can find the name of the theme that is currently in use on the left side of the Status bar, in case you’re curious about a theme you want to replace.
Selecting a theme
As shown in Figure 3-5, go to the Design tab and open the Themes gallery to select a theme. This gallery offers custom themes that you’ve created yourself and built-in themes that come with PowerPoint, as well as commands for browsing for themes on your computer or network and saving a theme you created so that you can use it later on. The Themes gallery is the starting point for choosing and customizing themes.
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Figure 3-5: Select or customize a theme starting from the Themes gallery. |
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Selecting a theme in the Themes gallery
Follow these steps to select a theme for your presentation:
1. Click the Design tab.
2. In Normal view, shrink the Slides pane and enlarge the slide to 50% or more.
By shrinking the Slides pane and enlarging the slide, you’ll be able to “live-preview” the choices on the Themes gallery. As you move the pointer over themes in the gallery, you’ll be able to see what each theme looks like on your slide.
3. Click the More button on the Themes gallery.
You see the gallery menu (refer to Figure 3-5). Under “This Presentation,” the menu tells you which theme is currently in use.
If the Themes menu is too crowded, you can narrow the choices on the menu by opening the All Themes menu and choosing All Themes, This Presentation, Custom, or Built-In. The All Themes menu is located at the top of the Themes gallery menu.
4. Move the pointer over the theme choices, reading their names and noting how the themes look on the slide behind the gallery menu.
If you followed my advice in Step 2, you can see themes on the slide (refer to Figure 3-5). You may have to scroll to see all the theme choices.
5. Click a theme to select it.
If you can’t find a theme in the Themes gallery that meets your high standards, you have to search for a theme online or locate a theme on your computer that isn’t in the Themes gallery. Keep reading.
Templates and themes
Your first task when you create a new presentation is to choose a template. As Book I, Chapter 2 explains, a template is a starter file for creating a presentation. You can think of a template as a mannequin for hanging clothes on. Each template is formatted and laid out a certain way. You choose the template that best exemplifies the presentation you want to create. Besides the blank presentation template, PowerPoint offers templates designed for project overviews, training sessions, photo albums, and many more purposes.
Built into each template are a dozen or more themes. You can see the built-in themes in the Themes gallery on the Design tab (refer to Figure 3-5). Think of themes as the clothes you dress the template in. You can dress the template you chose for your presentation in one of its built-in themes, a customized theme you created, or a theme you borrow from another PowerPoint presentation. Which theme you choose for your presentation determines which colors, fonts, and effects are available to you (as “Customizing a theme on the Design tab” demonstrates later in this chapter).
Themes are stored in files with the .thmx extension. You can find theme files in the C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Document Themes folder. Themes you create yourself are stored in the C:\Documents and Settings\ Your Name (or All Users or Default User)\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates\Document Themes folder (in Windows XP) and in the C:\Users\ Your Name \AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates\Document Themes folder (in Windows Vista).
Borrowing a theme from another presentation
If the theme you want isn’t in the Themes gallery, see whether you can borrow a theme from another PowerPoint presentation. Follow these steps to recycle a theme from another presentation:
1. On the Design tab, open the Themes gallery.
The Themes drop-down list opens (refer to Figure 3-5).
2. Click Browse for Themes.
You see the Choose Theme or Themed Document dialog box, shown in Figure 3-6.
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Figure 3-6: Select a template or PowerPoint presentation in this dialog box. |
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3. Locate and select a PowerPoint presentation with a theme you can appropriate for your presentation.
Visit the folders on your computer or network where PowerPoint presentations and themes are kept.
To get a good look at the theme used in a presentation, click the Views button in the upper-right corner of the dialog box and choose Preview (refer to Figure 3-6).
4. Click the Apply button.
The theme used in the presentation you selected now inhabits your presentation.
Customizing a theme
Perfectionists and control freaks like to customize themes, as do people with a lot of time on their hands. The Design tab offers a few ways to customize a theme. When you’re done customizing your theme, you can save it under a name and be able to use it later. These topics are covered in the very exciting pages that follow.
Customizing a theme on the Design tab
Starting on the Design tab, you can customize a theme with these techniques:
Choosing a new set of colors: The easiest and best way to experiment with customizing a theme is to choose a different color set, as shown in Figure 3-7. Click the Colors button, slide the pointer over the different color sets on the drop-down list, and see what effect they have on your slide. (Book VII, Chapter 2 explains how to create your own color set for a theme.)
Change the fonts: Click the Fonts button and choose a combination of fonts on the drop-down list for the slide titles and slide text on your slides. You can also choose Create New Theme Fonts on the list and select theme fonts of your own, as Book VII, Chapter 2 explains.
Change theme effects: A theme effect is a slight refinement to a theme. Click the Effects button and choose a theme effect on the drop-down list.
Choosing a Background Style theme variation: Most themes offer background style variations. Click the Background Styles button to open the Background Styles gallery and select a style. Later in this chapter, “Creating Slide Backgrounds on Your Own” explains how you can create backgrounds similar to these, as well as how to create single-color, gradient, clip-art, and picture backgrounds.
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Figure 3-7: Experimen-ting with theme colors is the easiest way to customize a theme. |
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Hiding the background graphics: As shown in Figure 3-8, you can remove the background graphic, if the theme includes one, from all the slides in your presentation by selecting the Hide Background Graphics check box on the Design tab. The previous chapter explains how to remove a background graphic from one or two, not all, of the slides (select slides before selecting the check box).
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Figure 3-8: You can remove a theme’s background graphic from your slides. |
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You can also customize all the slides in a presentation by making changes to the Slide Master. For example, to place a company logo in the corner of all slides, place the logo on the Slide Master. The previous chapter explains how the Slide Master works.
Choosing a default theme for all new presentations
When you open PowerPoint to begin constructing a presentation, you start with the Default theme, a plain-looking theme. A drab-looking theme. A tabula rosa with not much going for it.
In case the company you work for has a theme for PowerPoint presentations or you want to start working from a theme you’re especially fond of whenever you open PowerPoint, you can make that theme the default. You can make your favorite theme the one that stares you in the face when you start PowerPoint by following these steps:
1. On the Design tab, open the Themes gallery.
2. Select your favorite theme.
3. Right-click it in the gallery and choose Set As Default Theme.
Saving your customized theme
After you’ve customized a theme, you can save it under a new name and be able to select it for other presentations. Customized themes you make yourself appear under the “Custom” heading in the Themes gallery. Here are ways to save, rename, and delete themes that you tweaked or customized:
Saving a theme: On the Design tab, open the Themes gallery and choose Save Current Theme. You see the Save Current Theme dialog box. Enter a descriptive name for your theme and click the Save button.
Renaming a theme: In Windows Explorer or My Computer, go to the folder where theme files (.thmx) are kept; in Windows XP, go to the C:\Documents and Settings\
Your Name
(or All Users or Default User)\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates\Document Themes folder; in Windows Vista, go to the C:\Users\
Your Name
\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates\Document Themes folder. Then rename the theme file (right-click it, choose Rename, and enter a new name).
Deleting a theme: In Windows Explorer or My Computer, go to the folder where theme files (.thmx) are kept. In Windows XP, go to the C:\Documents and Settings\
Your Name
(or All Users or Default User)\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates\Document Themes folder; in Windows Vista, go to the C:\Users\
Your Name
\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates\Document Themes folder. Then delete the theme file (select it and press the Del key).
Creating Slide Backgrounds on Your Own
Besides a theme or Background Style, your other option for creating slide backgrounds is to do it on your own. For a background, you can have a solid color, a transparent color, a gradient blend of two colors, a picture, or a clip-art image. How to create these kinds of slide backgrounds on your own is the subject of the next several pages.
To create a background style of your own, start on the Design tab and click the Background Styles button. Then, on the drop-down list, select Format Background. You see the Format Background dialog box. From there, you can get to work on creating a customized background all your own.
Using a solid (or transparent) color for the slide background
Using a solid or transparent color as the background of slides gives your presentation a straightforward, honest look. Because all the slides are the same color or transparent color, the audience can focus better on the presentation itself rather than the razzle-dazzle. Follow these steps to use a solid or transparent color as the background:
1. On the Design tab, click the Background Styles button to open the drop-down list.
2. Choose the Format Background command at the bottom of the list.
You see the Format Background dialog box. You can also open this dialog box by right-clicking a slide and choosing Format Background.
3. Select the Solid Fill option button.
4. Click the Color Picker button and choose a color on the drop-down list.
The muted theme colors are recommended because they look better in the background, but you can select a standard color or click the More Colors button and select a color in the Colors dialog box.
5. Drag the Transparency slider if you want a “bleached out” color rather than a slide color.
At 0% transparency, you get a solid color; at 100%, you get no color at all.
6. Click the Apply to All button.
7. Click the Close button.
I sincerely hope you like your choice of colors, but if you don’t, try, try, try again.
Selecting a gradient blend of two colors for the slide background
Gradient refers to how and where two colors grade, or blend, into one another on a slide. As well as the standard linear gradient direction, you can opt for a radial, rectangular, or path gradient direction, as shown in Figure 3-9. Gradient backgrounds look terribly elegant. Using a gradient is an excellent way to create an original background that looks different from all the other presenters’ slide backgrounds.
The Type drop-down list tells PowerPoint what type of gradient you want — Linear, Radial, Rectangular, or Path (refer to Figure 3-9). If you select the Linear option, you can select the angle at which the colors blend.
Stops indicate where on the slide colors blend. You choose one gradient stop for each color you want.
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Figure 3-9: The Gradient Type options (clockwise from upper left): Linear (at 180 degrees), Radial, Rectangular, and Path (all shown at 50-50 percent blend). |
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Before you experiment with gradients, try opening the Preset Colors drop-down list to see whether one of the preset options does the job for you.
Drag the Format Background dialog box to the left side of the screen so that you can see your slide better, and follow these steps to create the gradient blend of the different colors:
1. Select Stop 1 on the Gradient Stops drop-down list; then click the Color button and select a color; then click the Add button.
2. Select Stop 2 on the Gradient Stops drop-down list, select a color for it as well, and click the Add button.
Now you’ve selected the two gradient colors. You can select more colors if you wish. Your next task is to tell PowerPoint where to blend the colors.
3. Select Stop 1 on the Gradient Stops drop-down list and then drag the Stop Position slider.
Watch how the slide on your screen changes as you drag.
4. Select Stop 2 on the Gradient Stops drop-down list and drag the Stop Position slider.
Notice how the two colors blend on your slide. For Figure 3-9, I dragged the slider to 50% for each Stop color.
I’ll wager you have to repeat Steps 3 and 4 several times until you find the right blend.
5. Open the Type drop-down list and choose a gradient direction option: Linear, Radial, Rectangular, Path, or Shade from Title.
Refer back to Figure 3-9 to see how these options look. If you choose Linear, you can enter a degree measurement in the Angle box to change the angle at which the colors blend. At 90 degrees, for example, they blend horizontally across the slide; at 180 degrees, they blend vertically across the slide.
6. Drag the Transparency slider to make the colors more or less transparent.
At 0% transparency, you get solid colors (except where they blend); at 100%, you get much lighter colors.
7. Click the Apply to All button and then click Close.
Very likely, you have to experiment with stop colors and stop positions until you blend the colors to your satisfaction. Good luck.
Placing a clip-art image in the slide background
As long as they are on the pale side or you’ve made them transparent, clip-art images do fine for slide backgrounds. They look especially good on title slides. Figure 3-10 shows examples of clip-art images as backgrounds. As Book IV, Chapter 4 explains, PowerPoint comes with numerous clip-art images. You are invited to place one in the background of your slides by following these steps:
1. On the Design tab, click the Background Styles button to open the drop-down list.
2. Choose the Format Background command at the bottom of the menu.
The Format Background dialog box appears.
3. Click the Picture or Texture Fill option button.
4. Click the Clip Art button.
You see the Select Picture dialog box. The images in this dialog box are from the Office clip-art collections that came with PowerPoint when you installed it. I strongly recommend visiting Book IV, Chapter 4 when you have a spare moment. It explains how clip art works in PowerPoint.
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Figure 3-10: For backgrounds, clip art usually has to be at least somewhat transparent. These images are (from left to right) 0%, 40%, 65%, and 85% transparent. |
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5. Find a clip-art image you can use in the background of your slides.
How you search for a clip-art image is up to you:
• Scroll through the clip-art images until you find a good one.
• Enter a search term in the Search Text box and click the Go button. Clip-art images that fit your search-term description appear in the dialog box.
• Click the Include Content from Office Online check box and connect your computer to the Internet before you enter a search term and click the Go button. You can get hundreds of clip-art images this way.
6. Select the clip-art image you want and click OK.
7. In the Format Background dialog box, enter a Transparency measurement.
Drag the Transparency slider or enter a measurement in the box. The higher the measurement, the more transparent the image is. Figure 3-10 gives you a sense of what the Transparency measurements are. In the figure, clip-art images are displayed at 0-, 40-, 65-, and 85-percent transparency. Some clip-art images need to be more transparent than others.
8. Click the Apply to All button and then click Close.
There you have it. The clip-art image you selected lands in the slides’ background.
Using a graphic for a slide background
Figure 3-11 shows examples of graphics being used as the background of slides. Select your graphic carefully. A graphic with too many colors — and that includes the majority of color photographs — obscures the text and makes it difficult to read. You can get around this problem by “recoloring” a graphic to give it a uniform color tint, selecting a grayscale photograph, selecting a photo with colors of a similar hue, or making the graphic semi-transparent, but all in all, the best way to solve the problem of a graphic that is obscuring the text is to start with a quiet, subdued graphic. (Book IV, Chapter 3 explains all the ins and outs of using graphics in slides.)
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Figure 3-11: Examples of graphics used as slide backgrounds. |
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Follow these steps to use a graphic as a slide background:
1. On the Design tab, click the Background Styles button to open the drop-down list.
2. Choose the Format Background command at the bottom of the menu.
You see the Format Background dialog box.
3. Click the Picture or Texture Fill option button.
4. Click the File button.
The Insert Picture dialog box appears.
5. Locate the graphic you want, select it, and click the Insert button.
The graphic lands on your slide.
6. Enter a Transparency measurement to make the graphic fade a bit into the background.
Drag the slider or enter a measurement in the Transparency box. The higher percentage measurement you enter, the more “bleached out” the graphic is.
7. Using the Stretch Offsets text boxes, enter measurements to make your graphic fit on the slides.
8. Click the Apply to All button and then click Close.
How do you like your slide background? You may have to open the Format Background dialog box again and play with the Transparency setting. Only the very lucky and the permanently blessed get it right the first time.
Using a texture for a slide background
Yet another option for slide backgrounds is to use a texture. As shown in Figure 3-12, a texture gives the impression that the slide is displayed on a material such as cloth or stone. A texture can make for a very elegant slide background. Follow these steps to use a texture as a slide background:
1. On the Design tab, click the Background Styles button to open the drop-down list.
2. Choose Format Background.
The Format Background dialog box appears.
3. Click the Picture or Texture Fill option button.
4. Click the Texture button and choose a texture on the drop-down list.
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Figure 3-12: Different textures (clockwise from upper-left): Papyrus, Canvas, Newsprint, and Cork. |
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5. Enter a Transparency measurement to make the texture less imposing.
Drag the slider or enter a measurement in the Transparency box.
6. Click the Apply to All button and then click Close.
Changing the Background of a Single or Handful of Slides
To make a single slide (or a handful of slides) stand out in a presentation, change their background style or theme. A different background tells your audience that the slide being presented is a little different from the one before it. Maybe it imparts important information. Maybe it introduces another segment of the presentation. Use a different style or theme to mark a transition, indicate that your presentation has shifted gears, or mark a milestone in your presentation.
Selecting a different theme for some of the slides
Selecting a different theme for some of the slides in a presentation is just a matter of selecting the slides that need a new theme and selecting a new theme in the Themes gallery:
1. In Slide Sorter view, select the slides that need another theme.
You can select more than one slide by Ctrl+clicking slides.
2. On the Design tab, open the Themes gallery and select a theme.
Earlier in this chapter, “Making a Theme for Your Presentation” explains how to select and customize a theme. Refer to that part of the chapter if need be.
Creating a different background for some of the slides
Select the slides that need a new background. Then, on the Design tab, click the Background Styles button and create a new background for the slides you selected. Earlier in this chapter, “Creating Slide Backgrounds on Your Own” explains how to choose a color, blend of gradient colors, clip-art image, or picture background for slides.
Selecting a different theme or background style for slide layouts
Another approach to changing the background of some of the slides is to change slides made with the same slide layout. As you know, you select a slide layout — Title Slide, Title and Content, and others — on the New Slide drop-down list when you insert a new slide in a presentation. As the previous chapter explains in onerous detail, PowerPoint gives you one layout master slide for each slide layout in your presentation. By changing the theme or background of a layout master slide, you can change the theme or background of all slides made with the same slide layout. For example, you can change the background of all slides created with the Title Slide layout or the Title and Content layout.
Follow these steps to change the theme or background on all slides you created with the same slide layout:
1. Click the View tab.
2. Click the Slide Master button.
You switch to Slide Master view, as shown in Figure 3-13.
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Figure 3-13: Create a background for a layout in Slide Master view. |
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3. In the Slides pane, select the layout that needs a new background.
To find out which layout is which, move the pointer over master slides. A pop-up box tells you the layouts’ names and which slides in your presentation were created with each one.
4. Change the theme or background.
On the Slide Master tab, you can find a Themes and Background Styles button for changing themes and backgrounds.
• A new theme: Click the Themes button. You see the Themes gallery. Earlier in this chapter, “Making a Theme for Your Presentation” explains how to use the gallery to select a theme.
• A new background: Click the Background Styles button (depending on the size of your screen, you may have to click the Background button first). You see the Background Styles drop-down list. Earlier in this chapter, “Creating Slide Backgrounds on Your Own” explains how, starting from this list, you can choose a color, blend of gradient colors, clip-art image, or picture background for slides.
5. Click the Close Master View button on the Slide Master tab to leave Slide Master view.
I take it you know your way around Slide Master view and how master slides and master styles work if you’ve come this far, but if you feel you are in dark and dangerous waters, see the previous chapter. It explains master slides.
I suggest looking around your presentation to find out what effect your change to the layout had. You may have to click the Undo button and start all over.