Google Presentations: Creating and Adding Themes

One of the key components to a well-received slide presentation is a theme. A good theme adds color and presents your information in an attractive manor without overpowering the images and text.

Currently, Google Presentations offers fifteen pre-designed presentation themes. If you'd rather create your own, you can do that easily.

Using one of Google's themes is easy.

1. Log in to your Google Docs account.
2. Create a new presentation, or open one you've already started.
   

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3. From the menu at the top, select Edit - > Change Theme
4. A window will open with all the available themes. Choose the theme that you want to use by clicking on it.

After you select your desired theme, it will automatically be applied to all the slides in your presentation.

If you don't find a predefined theme that you like, you can either upload your own graphics or change slide background colors to create a theme. Before you upload your favorite graphic, think about the overall visual effect that you want your theme to have. Overpowering or strong graphics pull attention from your information and can distract your reader. Light solid colors with relevant pictures work best.

Keep in mind as you're considering which images to use Google Docs requires uploaded background images to be 2MB or smaller and no more than 6.25 mega pixels. After you choose the images that you want to use, the next step is to upload that image and set it as your background.

1. On the left side of the screen, you will see a thumbnail of each frame in your presentation.
2. Click the frame
3. From the menu, select Edit - > Change Background
4. The Change Background window will open.
5. In this window, select Insert image
   

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6. Click Browse, and select the file you want from your computer.
7. To apply the image to every slide in your presentation, select Apply background to all slides.
8. When you're finished, click Save.

Sometimes you might want to use a solid background color. It's simple to do and takes less than a minute.

1. From the thumbnails on the left, select the slide that you'd like to alter.
2. In the menu, select Edit - > Change Background.
   

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3. Click the paint bucket icon under Insert Image.
4. Select your desired color from the palette. Or, click the plus sign (+) at the bottom of the palette to create a custom hue.
5. The color that you select will appear in the preview box. Double check to make sure that it's the color you want.
6. If you want the change applied to all slides in your presentation, select the check box Apply background to all slides.
7. When you're finished, select Save.