Josh Clark - Creating Keynote Slideshows: The Mini Missing Manual

Creating Keynote Slideshows: The Mini Missing Manual

by Josh Clark

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January 2010: First Edition.

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ISBN: 9781449382575

Introduction

Keynote is a presentation program for making slideshows, usually to accompany a talk or other live presentation. The program helps you build screens of text and graphics to illustrate important points as you roam the stage earning the awe and admiration of your audience. As you flip from slide to slide, Keynote shimmies and shakes with cinematic transitions, clever animations, and all the supporting razzle-dazzle that your presentation deserves.

More than just a pretty face, though, Keynote is also an elegantly simple program to use. Theres an awful lot of complexity behind the scenes of the programs eye-popping effects, but Keynote modestly keeps the hard stuff to itself. For you, the presenter, the design process is always simple and straightforward. Keynote gets you started with a big collection of themes that make your slides look great even when you dont use a single special effect. Whether subdued or noisy, your slideshows design is always polished and consistent.

Note: This e-book focuses on creating Keynote presentations. If you need help with all aspects of presenting, such as managing your equipment or saving your slideshow in different formats, check out Sharing Keynote Slideshows: The Mini Missing Manual . If youre new to iWork, you can learn all of the wonderful things you can do with Pages, Numbers, and Keynote in iWork 09: The Missing Manual .

Creating a Keynote Slideshow

Slideshows have come a long way since the days of kerosene
powered magic lanterns, but the basic concept remains the same: Project an image with words or pictures on a screen for an audiences entertainment or edification. Whether youre an old-schooler clicking your slide carousel or a 21st-century citizen with a computer connected to a video projector, slideshows derive their power from their simplicity. By displaying a single static image one at a time, slideshows present information simply and clearlyand often with more impact than you could achieve with a moving picture.

Keynote lets you create very basic, simple slidesfor example, just words on a plain background or a single pictureor carefully designed slides containing photographs, animation, or even movies and sound. Whether you opt for simple or fancy, the basic idea is the same: Pick a design theme, create the individual slides, and arrange them in the proper order.

This chapter takes you through the basics of all these steps, giving you an overview of all of Keynotes main features before diving into them in more detail in the following chapters.

Themes = Templates

Keynote comes with a whole arsenal of killer design templatescalled themes which you can adopt or adapt for your own
documents.

Note: If youve used Pages or Numbers, you can skip the next couple of pages. Themes in Keynote work exactly the same was as templates do in those programs. If you need more detail, check out iWork 09: The Missing Manual .

When you first launch Keynote, the Theme Chooser window greets you with a spread of Keynotes 44 built-in themes ( ). The Theme Chooser shows miniature previews of the available slide designs. Skim your cursor across the face of any of these thumbnail images to flip through an abbreviated selection of the slide layouts within, as well as previews of the themes table and chart styles.

To open an existing slideshow, choose from the Open Recent pop-up menu, or click the Open an Existing File button to flip the Theme Chooser over and choose a file from your computer. Keynotes themes are not divided by category. The Theme Chooser gives you all of them at once in one big bucket, and this collection grows as you make your own themes or install themes that you buy or find online. Thats a lot of slide designs to take in, but you can make it easier to scan the whole lot at once by making the previews smaller. At the bottom of the window, nudge the size slider to the left to fit more thumbnails into the window; pull the slider to the right to make these miniatures larger for a closer view.

Figure 1-1: The look and feel of your presentation depends on your choice of theme. Apple provides 44 themes with Keynote 09, and you can also create your own or purchase themes from third-party designers. Choose the size of your slides in the Slide Size pop-up menu, and double-click one of the themes to get started on your slideshow. Change the size of these previews by adjusting the size slider (A), or adjust the size of the overall window by dragging the resize handle in the lower-right corner (B).

When you find the theme you want, double-click it, or click once to select a theme and then press Return or click Choose. A new, untitled document window zooms out from the Theme Chooser, and youre on your way.

Tip: The next time you open the Theme Chooser, Keynote remembers your choice and helpfully selects it for you; just press Return to start a new project with the same theme. If you find yourself using that same theme all the time, you can tell Keynote to use it automatically for new documents instead of pestering you with the Theme Chooser every time. Choose KeynotePreferences and click the General button. Next to For New Documents, click the Use theme button and make your selection from the Theme Chooser.

Your First Keynote Slideshow

As the head costume stylist for Up & Away, the leading outfitter for the superheroes of Megaville, youve been invited to speak to students at the Excelsior School for Heroic Design. The plan is to give an introductory talk on the nostalgic designs of classic superhero costumes and how to update them for the new millenniumfrom cape pros and cons to basic bulletproofing. To build your slideshow, youll turn to the newest tool in your utility belt, Keynote.

For this project, choose Gradient from the Theme Choosera simple theme for a look as bold, dramatic, and practical as your costumed clients. A new document window flies out at you, filled with the title slide for your presentation ( ). Youre ready to explore your workspace and start designing your slides.

Tip: Although you havent done a thing yet, its a great idea to save the project right at the start. Choose FileSave (or -S), name your presentation, select a destination folder, and click Save. Then periodically press -S as you work to save your changes on your hard drive, protecting you from possible power outages, software glitches, or creative tantrums.