what is a theme presentation

• Business & tech

Presentation templates vs. themes: A brief guide to choosing the right one

• Last Updated : May 13, 2024

Presentation slides have become an integral part of every business function, from brainstorming to closing sales deals. Creating a presentation poses numerous challenges, including choosing the right template, drafting engaging content, and finding the right visuals, all while adhering to your timelines. Having neatly designed presentations leads to a positive experience for your audience. But with so many items on your checklist, you might not be able to spend much time designing your slides.

Templates and themes are both useful tools for quickly creating impressive presentations because they help you reduce the time you spend on manual formatting. To utilise both themes and templates effectively, it's important to understand the difference between them.

In this blog, we'll take a look at some key aspects that will help you identify which one suits the needs for your next presentation.

What is a presentation theme?

A theme consists of slide layouts with colors, fonts, and other visual elements that complement each other. It focuses on the overall aesthetics and helps make sure your presentation looks professional and consistent.

What is a presentation template?

A template is a predesigned group of slides that can be customized to help you create a presentation in minutes. A presentation template is used to give structure to your presentation, whether it's a sales pitch, project update, onboarding process, and any other presentation.

Every presentation template has a unique theme with its own colors and design elements to help maintain consistency throughout the presentation.  

Themes vs templates 

Themes: Each theme comprises 7- 10 slide layouts, which you can use to quickly prepare brief presentations.

Templates: Typically contain 15-20 slides that cover a wide range of possible topics, rather than just slide layouts. The marketing pitch template mentioned earlier is a good example.

Which to use: Themes are a good fit when you have content that fits in a minimal number of slides. Templates, on the other hand, can help you with more complex presentations that require a larger amount of content.

Structure 

Themes: Themes do not have a specific structure. You can use different slide layouts with a lot of flexibility to adapt based on the content.  

Templates: Templates do have a defined structure. They contain multiple slides with content placeholders in them and cover likely sub topics under a specific use case. This makes it easier for you to prepare for specific types of presentations and establish a good flow.

Which to use: Themes are preferable when you want to be creative in presenting your content or have a unique structure in mind. On the other hand, it's beneficial to use templates when you have a complex topic and need to follow an established structure.

Customization

Themes: Themes can be changed anytime when you are working on the presentation because it consists of basic design elements and layouts.

Templates: Templates cannot be changed once you start working since the whole structure of the presentation differs in each template.

Which to use: Use themes when you are sure about the objectives and the content of your presentation. Otherwise, you may want to pick a theme to ensure that you don't have to rework.

Themes: Themes include slide layouts but not placeholders for visuals, charts, and graphs. You would have to add them manually as needed.

Templates:  Templates save a lot of time by including placeholders for visuals, media, and data art.

Which to use: Templates are more efficient when you have visuals and charts to add to your slides. It is highly recommended that you consider using templates for business presentations where you need to visualize data.

Final thoughts

There are several factors that determine whether to use a template or a theme for a presentation. While both these are easy to use, what matters the most is your need.

You might start with a theme and decide to use individual template for certain headings. In such cases, you can also use slide templates  for specific slides like comparison, timeline, cover, and end slides. 

Remember to focus on your audience. It's important to think about what kind of content and design will resonate with them. Keep this in mind while choosing a theme or a template for your next presentation.

Happy presenting!

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PowerPoint Templates VS Theme: What Is The Difference?

When it comes to PowerPoint presentations, there are different tools you can use to make them attractive. PowerPoint templates and themes are a great way to build and edit your presentations easily and effortlessly. But which tool should you choose? Where should you begin? The chances are that you may have some confusion. You would want to clarify what would you want to say and what content or data you will need to show. How will you organize the content on a page? How can you make it visually attractive?

While thinking of the corporate PowerPoint design, it is important to stick to the brand. This is the main reason why people use Free PowerPoint Templates . But on the other hand, there are also PowerPoint themes. Now, you may be confused about which option to go with when it comes to building presentations.

Read more to know the difference between PowerPoint templates and themes.

PowerPoint templates and themes are beneficial to creating content, which looks consistent and attractive while eluding plenty of manual formatting.

Free PowerPoint Presentation Template

What are PowerPoint Templates?

Templates are themes with some content. This content can be related to anything like a business plan, a sales presentation, lessons, a project, etc. The major thing to know about templates is that they have design elements like fonts, colors, effects, and backgrounds. All of these elements work together with sample slides and content on the boilerplate that you extend to tell your story. Customized templates can be created easily. After creating them, you can store, reuse, and share them with other people. There are also free templates available, from which you can choose anyone accordingly.

What are PowerPoint Themes?

PowerPoint themes are a predefined set of fonts, colors, and visual effects. Themes are applied to your slides for a professional and united look. With themes, you can give your presentation a pleasant-sounding appearance with reduced effort. Like, when you add graphics like shapes and tables to your presentation slides, theme colors are applied to PowerPoint that is compatible with other elements of the slide.

There are many preset themes offered by PowerPoint. To access preset themes, you need to visit the ‘Design’ tab of the ribbon available on the left side. First of all, open a slide and point to a theme thumbnail on the Design tab and get a preview of how it would impact the appearance of your slide. If you want to check the full gallery of themes, click the ‘More’ button. After finding a theme, click its thumbnail and the theme will be applied to all slides in the presentation.

PowerPoint Templates VS Themes 

Themes provide your presentations with a designer-quality appearance. It includes one or more slide layouts with synchronizing colors, fonts, effects, and matching backgrounds. While on the other hand, a PowerPoint template is a blueprint or pattern of a slide or a collection of slides that are saved as a .potx file. A template can contain theme colors, layouts, theme fonts, background styles, theme effects, and even content.

PowerPoint templates give an idea to PowerPoint on how to lay out different kinds of information on each presentation slide. Themes tell PowerPoint the way to make that information look attractive.

Uses of PowerPoint Templates & Themes

A PowerPoint template can jump-start your presentation. You can begin building slides that are constant in appearance. Slides are easy to replicate. Templates can be used by anyone and anywhere for a variety of purposes. Whether you are an educator, a sales executive, a project manager, or an executive assistant, you can use the PowerPoint template as it can fit into any scenario.

On the other side, when you use a presentation theme, it will give your presentation a nice look without any hassle. Based on the purpose of your presentation or your industry, a theme may give you many options for slides and layouts that are related to the specific niche. A benefit of using themes is that PowerPoint will apply the theme colors consistently, giving it a uniform look and feel while adding new text,  PowerPoint Graphic Design , shapes, and tables to slides. For more info, visit  visualspiders.com.

Related Content:  Top Professional Presentation Template Designs 2022

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Difference between PowerPoint Templates, Themes, and Layouts?

• December 3, 2020
• Last updated: February 23, 2024

Wondering what is the difference between a PowerPoint theme and a PowerPoint template? Or what is the difference between templates and layouts in PowerPoint? You’re not alone!  When writing the feature overview for PPT Productivity's new PowerPoint Templates Manager feature , we found Microsoft’s information about each to be confusing.  We're have tried to summarize it in the following three points, plus some additional information on each in the overview guide below:

• PowerPoint Themes consist of colors, fonts, effects and background styles 
• PowerPoint Layouts are pre-designed formats which determine how information is displayed on a slide
• PowerPoint Templates bring together a PowerPoint theme and slide layouts, along with any additional customizations (e.g. your company logo saved as a background image etc) to create a foundation for your presentation 

In our experience working with large organizations, the marketing team typically own the creation of the company endorsed PowerPoint templates.  But Marketing focus on ensuring brand elements are appropriately covered (often including approved imagery and any endorsed fonts).  Quite often they haven’t given much consideration to the usability of the layouts.  The result?  Company templates often have marketing endorsed branding colors, logos and images, but they are frustrating to actually use.  The good news is that you can easily update your template to make it more efficient!

What is a Theme in PowerPoint?

A PowerPoint theme gives your template it’s 'personality'. The theme of your template determines:

• The color palette it will use for the text, shapes and background
• What type of font(s) are set as defaults
• What effects and bullet style are set as defaults

When you create a new presentation, you can either use one of the standard PowerPoint options or create your own PowerPoint theme design. To use a Microsoft pre-set theme, navigate to the ‘Design’ tab on the Standard PowerPoint ribbon.  If you’re working out of an existing PowerPoint template (e.g. if you’re working out of one of your existing company presentations that the marketing team created) then your existing template will already has a PowerPoint theme defined for it.  Using the colors designated by your presentation's theme will give your presentation a more consistent or cohesive look.

NOTE: Themes set default color, font and bullet styles. But they do not prevent users from adding other colors or fonts when using a template.

Learn how to create or customize your own color palette for a theme

On the PPT Productivity ribbon you can see the theme font of your template in the Text group

At the top of the PPT Productivity Color Toolbar you will see your theme's color palette (outlined in red below)

What are PowerPoint Layouts?

The Layout in PowerPoint determines the default placement for content on the slide and it also indicates the type of content each layout is intended for. PowerPoint layouts are the slide layouts within a PowerPoint template that contain the formatting, positioning and placeholders for the content that appears on the slide. PowerPoint has standard slide layouts, but you can also modify these layouts, or create new layouts according to your requirements.

The standard PowerPoint Template comes with several default layouts. You can change the layout used on any given slide by clicking the Layout dropdown menu from the PPT Productivity ribbon and selecting the desired layout for your slide. Or visit the ‘Home’ tab to find the Layout menu.

When creating or updating a template and selecting layouts, the layouts become ‘layout/ slide masters’.  The most important of these layout/ slide masters is the ‘Master Slide Layout’ or ‘Parent Slide’.  This is the first one that shows when you navigate to ‘View > Slide Master’.  This ‘Parent’ Slide cascades elements like page numbers or slide titles to the other layouts in its group. The subsequent layouts are known as the ‘Child Slides’. Any change you make to the first slide/ layout (‘Parent Slide’) will be replicated in the layouts below it (‘Child Masters’).

For example, if you add a logo to the ‘Parent’ master layout, it will appear on all the ‘Child’ layouts. To make unique changes to individual layouts, select that layout and adjust as needed. Changes made to Child layouts will only affect the individual layout.

Note – you do not need to create a layout for every slide format you intend to use.  Layouts are intended to save time by providing shortcuts for the more commonly used slide layouts (and enabling you to specify the layouts to be brand aligned). 

What is a PowerPoint Template?

A PowerPoint Template is the foundation of your presentation.  As part of creating a Template, you will need to include a theme and slide layouts (either by selecting default options or by customizing).

Templates are saved as .potx files.

If you are a PPT Productivity user, you can find all your Templates by clicking on the Template management icon in the File group on your top ribbon.

For a step-by-step guide to create your own Template see our post ‘Want to know how to create a custom template in PowerPoint?’

How to edit your PowerPoint Template

How do you open a powerpoint template to edit it.

To edit your .potx file, you need to find the file (in windows explorer), right click and select ‘Open’.  If you open the .potx file by double clicking or from within PowerPoint, it will trigger ‘using’ the template instead and will create a new blank document based on the template.

Once you have opened the template master you can make most updates in the same way that you would update a standard presentation. Our guide ‘Want to know how to create a custom template in PowerPoint?’ provides detailed steps on creating or editing the various elements of a template.

Hack your Template to Boost your Productivity

Templates are not always set up properly. If you address this by editing your .potx file, you can save yourself a lot of time.  Here are some of the typical problems we’ve seen and our suggestions to solve them:

• The creator of a template often includes a duplication of the layouts as actual slides in the pack.  This means that when you open the template you need to delete all the slides before you can get to work.  Our suggestion – edit the .potx file to delete these slides, so you can always open an empty deck ready for action.
• Templates are often set up to do annoying things like ‘shrink text size to fit’; or use a weird paragraph style format on indent.   Once again – open the .potx file, set the template to use the paragraph styles you prefer, and you’ll benefit every day you work on a deck!
• Use a layout quite frequently that isn’t in the default?  Our Shape Library offers layout options to make it easy, but you can also edit the .potx file to include your preferences
• Share the updated .potx with your team!  If you are frustrated that colleagues or team members are creating presentations with issues caused by the template, make the update to the .potx file and either arrange with IT for it to be updated in central deployment (if your template is centrally installed onto all machines) or simply email the updated .potx file to colleagues!

In summary, a Template is a preset of a theme, layouts and typically custom logo/ branding inserted into the layouts which provide a visual foundation for your presentation.  Slide layouts propose formats for how to layout different types of information on a slide.  The Theme determines default colors and fonts which will be used when a user adds wording or shapes to the slides.

Generally, when people refer to a PowerPoint Template, they will be referring to a combination of the layout and the theme as these are the elements that make up a PowerPoint Template as a whole.

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What is Theme in PowerPoint? (Apply, Choose, Chang e and Customize it)

• February 17, 2024

Imagine no one giving proper attention to your PowerPoint presentation at a meeting! It’s a scenario that no one wants to be in. So, how can you keep the viewer’s attention in a presentation? Simply, by using unique PowerPoint themes.  

But, what is the theme in PowerPoint anyway? To put it simply, a theme is what you can call a color scheme that also includes fonts and other visual effects. You can put it on your slides to make them look more polished and cohesive.

Intrigued to know more about themes in PowerPoint? You’re in luck. By the end of this article, you will be able to create stunning presentations with themes that match your purpose and audience. Let’s get started!

What Is a Theme in PowerPoint?

In simple terms, a theme is known as a set of design choices that makes your slides look good together . Themes have matching colors, fonts, and effects, so everything looks coordinated. 

Using a theme means your slides will look professional without you having to do a lot of work. The theme does the design work for you and makes your presentation look unified.

You can access the themes in PowerPoint from the Design tab on the ribbon. There you can see a gallery of built-in themes that you are able to apply to the presentation with one click. 

You are also able to browse for more themes online or download them from other sources.

How To Choose and Apply a Theme In Powerpoint?

PowerPoint comes with a number of premade templates that you are able to access from the Design tab on the ribbon. 

To get ahold of the complete collection of themes, follow the below-mentioned steps:

• Step 1: Select More from the drop-down menu located in the rightmost corner of the Themes section. 

• Step 2: You can preview how a theme would look on your slide by hovering over its thumbnail. If you like the look of a particular theme and want to use it for the entire presentation, just click on the thumbnail of that theme.

Step 3: You are also able to download more themes from online sources and then apply them by left-clicking “ Browse for Themes” at the lower portion of the gallery.

Doing this will open a new window where you may search for templates on Office.com or on your computer.

It’s also possible to acquire pre-designed themes from other websites, such as Envato or Slidesgo . These websites offer countless varieties of themes for various topics and purposes. 

To use these themes, you need to download them and save them in a folder on your PC. Then, you can use the  Browse for Themes option (as shown in step 3 above) to apply it.

Need a more lively guide on applying themes? Here’s a quick video instruction that you can check. 

How To Apply A Theme In PowerPoint to Only One Or A Few Slides?

By default, the theme you select applies to all slides in your presentation. However, you are also able to apply a theme to only one or a few slides if you prefer to create some contrast or variety in your presentation.

To apply a theme to only one or a few slides, follow these steps:

• Step 1: Select the slide or slides that you prefer to change. Slides can be selected in bulk by clicking while holding the Control (Ctrl) key. Hold the “ CTRL” button, and left-click on the mouse. 
• Step 2: Right-click on the theme that you prefer to apply and choose Apply to Selected Slides from the menu.

The selected slides will now have the new theme applied, while the rest of the slides will keep the original theme.

How To Customize A Theme In Powerpoint?

Sometimes, you might need to tweak some aspects of a theme to suit your preferences or needs. For example, you might need to change the color scheme, the font style, or the background image of a theme. You can do this by customizing the theme elements in PowerPoint.

To customize a theme element, follow these steps:

• Step 1: Go to the Design tab and click on the Variants drop-down arrow.

• Step 2: Choose the element that you prefer to customize: Colors , Fonts , Effects , or Background Styles.

• Step 3: Select one of the available options from the menu or click the “>” (right-oriented arrow) icon to generate your very own.

• Depending on which element you choose, you will see different options for customization. 

For example, if you choose Colors , you will see a list of color palettes that you are able to apply to your theme. You are also able to generate your very own color palette by clicking Customize Colors and choosing the colors that you want for each element.

• Similarly, if you choose Fonts , you will see a list of font pairs that you can apply to your theme. 

You can also generate your very own font pair by clicking Customize Fonts and choosing the fonts that you want for each element.

• If you choose Effects , you will see a list of visual effects that you are able to apply to your theme. 

These effects include shadows, reflections, glows, bevels, and 3D rotations. You cannot generate your very own effects in PowerPoint , but you can choose from different presets.

• If you choose Background Styles , you will see a list of background options that you are able to apply to your theme. These options include solid colors, gradients, textures, patterns, and pictures. 

You are also able to click Format Background to open a pane where you may adjust the fill, transparency, artistic effects, and picture settings of your background.

For your convenience, here’s a video guide for the whole process of customizing a theme below. 

How To Generate Your Very Own Theme In Powerpoint?

If none of the built-in or online themes meet your requirements, you can generate your very own theme from scratch or by modifying an existing one. 

To generate your very own theme, you need to use the Slide_Master view, which is where you will define the layout, design, and content of your slides.

To generate your very own theme, follow these steps:

• Step 1: Go to the View tab and click on Slide Master .

• Step 2: In the Slide Master view, you will see a list of slide layouts on the left and a large slide on the right. 

The slide at the top is the master slide , which controls the appearance of all slides in your presentation. 

The slides below are the layout slides, which control the appearance of specific types of slides, such as title slides, content slides, or comparison slides.

• Step 3: To generate your very own theme, you need to modify the master slide and the layout slides according to your preferences. 

You can change the background, the placeholders, the text styles, and the graphics of each slide. 

You are also able to add new slide layouts or delete existing ones by utilizing the buttons on the Slide Master tab.

• Step 4: To change the background of a slide, go to the Background group on the Slide Master tab and click Background Styles . 

You can choose from different background options or click Format Background to customize your own background.

• Step 5: To change the placeholders of a slide, go to the Master Layout group on the Slide Master tab and click Insert Placeholder . 

You can choose from different types of placeholders, such as text, picture, chart, table, or video. You are also able to resize, move, or delete placeholders by utilizing the handles or the right-click menu.

• Step 6: To change the text styles of a slide, go to the Edit Theme group on the Slide_Master tab and click Fonts . 

You can choose from different font pairs or click Customize Fonts to generate your very own font pair.

• Step 7: To change the graphics of a slide, go to the Edit Theme group on the Slide Master tab and click Colors or Effects . 

You can choose from different color palettes or visual effects or click Customize Colors to generate your very own.

• Step 8: When you are done creating your own theme, go to the Close group on the Slide Master tab and click Close Master View . 

You will return to the normal view with your new theme applied to the presentation.

At this point, there’s no doubt you have a pretty good idea of what a theme is in PowerPoint. Additionally, now you also know how to use it effectively.

All in all, a theme is known to be a design scheme of hues, fonts, and aesthetic effects. It’s what you use on your slides to give them a consistent, polished appearance.

By utilizing themes, you will put forth stunning presentations that match your purpose and audience with minimal effort. So, go ahead and use themes in PowerPoint all you want.

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Casual & vintage watercolor collage minitheme.

Download the Casual & Vintage Watercolor Collage Minitheme presentation for PowerPoint or Google Slides and start impressing your audience with a creative and original design. Slidesgo templates like this one here offer the possibility to convey a concept, idea or topic in a clear, concise and visual way, by using...

Funny Looking Cartoon Characters Minitheme

Download the Funny Looking Cartoon Characters Minitheme presentation for PowerPoint or Google Slides and start impressing your audience with a creative and original design. Slidesgo templates like this one here offer the possibility to convey a concept, idea or topic in a clear, concise and visual way, by using different...

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Sea Animals Story Book

Download the Sea Animals Story Book presentation for PowerPoint or Google Slides. The magic of storytelling takes a new form in this enrapturing storybook. Every bedtime, playtime, or fun classroom activity can be transformed into an enchanting journey into the realms of imagination. Match these slides to your words to...

Creative Leafy Backgrounds Minitheme

Download the Creative Leafy Backgrounds Minitheme presentation for PowerPoint or Google Slides and start impressing your audience with a creative and original design. Slidesgo templates like this one here offer the possibility to convey a concept, idea or topic in a clear, concise and visual way, by using different graphic...

Poems Story Book

Download the Poems Story Book presentation for PowerPoint or Google Slides. The magic of storytelling takes a new form in this enrapturing storybook. Every bedtime, playtime, or fun classroom activity can be transformed into an enchanting journey into the realms of imagination. Match these slides to your words to stir...

Modern Doodle Minitheme

Download the Modern Doodle Minitheme presentation for PowerPoint or Google Slides and start impressing your audience with a creative and original design. Slidesgo templates like this one here offer the possibility to convey a concept, idea or topic in a clear, concise and visual way, by using different graphic resources....

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Halloween Pattern Social Media

A lot of people are looking forward to celebrating Halloween. Let’s seize the opportunity to present a strategy for social media by using this new template. As its name suggests, it features patterns inspired by this famous festivity, and it’s design is quite cool indeed. Did we say it has...

Haunted Castle Minitheme

What’s better than a haunted house? Of course, a whole haunted castle! In this Google Slides and powerPoint template you’ll find vampires, graveyards, ghosts, witches, mummies and bats, and the list goes on! Of course, everything is set against a blood red sky (you’re welcome to think of it as...

It’s that time of year, it’s Halloween! Here at Slidesgo, we’ve created this new free presentation template, whose design is focused on funny graphic elements, which makes it perfect for your audience to have a nice time paying attention to what you want to say.

Watercolor Pumpkins Minitheme for Marketing

Spooky season is here! Enjoy the best festivity of the year with this funny template full of pumpkins, bats and spooky decorations, everything has been designed in watercolor style, so it has a special creative touch. Use the different resources we have included to speak about where this tradition comes...

Halloween Themed Lesson

What are you planning to do at school for Halloween? A costume party? A themed class? You'll need a presentation for that special class! And, of course, we have the presentation. This set of slides comes with information about the history, origin and traditions of Halloween to provide your students...

Happy Halloween! Trick or Treat

Indulge in the spook-tacular fun with this Google Slides & PowerPoint template. This creatively unique tool adorns a dark, eerily delightful design that sets the perfect ambiance for Halloween storytelling. Whether you're throwing a ghoulish gala or just wanting to share spine-chilling tales, this template serves as your canvas to...

Infographics

Fresh Lemon Pattern Newsletter Infographics

Download the Fresh Lemon Pattern Newsletter Infographics template for PowerPoint or Google Slides and discover the power of infographics. An infographic resource gives you the ability to showcase your content in a more visual way, which will make it easier for your audience to understand your topic. Slidesgo infographics like...

College Lessons with Cycle Diagrams

Download the College Lessons with Cycle Diagrams presentation for PowerPoint or Google Slides. As university curricula increasingly incorporate digital tools and platforms, this template has been designed to integrate with presentation software, online learning management systems, or referencing software, enhancing the overall efficiency and effectiveness of student work. Edit this...

Christmas Infographics

Download the Christmas Infographics template for PowerPoint or Google Slides and discover the power of infographics. An infographic resource gives you the ability to showcase your content in a more visual way, which will make it easier for your audience to understand your topic. Slidesgo infographics like this set here...

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Premature Newborn Care Breakthrough

Download the Premature Newborn Care Breakthrough presentation for PowerPoint or Google Slides.Treating diseases involves a lot of prior research and clinical trials. But whenever there’s a new discovery, a revolutionary finding that opens the door to new treatments, vaccines or ways to prevent illnesses, it’s great news. Should there be...

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