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> Anyone have any tips or clues to making your own or designing
> backgrounds to PowerPoint slides?
PowerPoint offer a lot of ways to customize the slide background.
Perhaps the easiest way is to start with an existing template that has
some elements you like, such as borders or some design element, and play
with the colors.
Create a new file by choosing File/New, then selecting Presentation
Designs. Browse through the template designs and pick one, then select
any layout you like. You'll see a slide using that template displayed.
Select Format/Custom Background. What then appears is an illustration
of how colors have been selected for that design template's background,
title, text, etc. and 8 boxes showing the colors selected for each. To
change any of those, click on the box with that color, then click the
triangle on the bar below that window and browse through the options.
"Automatic" means the color selections you see - the default for that
template. "Shaded" gives you options for different kinds of shading.
"Patterned" and "Textured" offer different options. If you select
"Picture" you'll be prompted for an existing graphic file to use in the
background - be careful about putting too much detail in the background
unless there's a very good reason for it. "Other Color" gives you a big
color palette to work with, and you can actually fine-tune these colors
by selecting the Custom tab. After making your selection, you'll see an
example of the color or other option you've chosen in the little window
on the right.
When you have the color/pattern combination you want, click Apply to
apply this color scheme to just this slide, or click Apply to All to use
it with all slides in this file.
A word of warning - the first couple of times you play with customizing
.ppt slides, you may get carried away, much as people using word
processors for the first time got carried away with using different
fonts and faces on the same page. Remember the KISS principle!
