Impress Guide

Designing a presentation
In addition to careful planning of the content (as discussed in Chapter
1), you need to plan the appearance of the presentation. It is best to do
this after you have developed an outline, because the outline will
determine some of the requirements for the slides’ appearance. For
example:
• What color combinations (background and text) will both look
good and be easy for your audience to see?
• Would a picture help your audience understand the contents
better?
• Do you want particular text and a picture to appear on all the
slides? (for example a company name and logo.)
• Would the audience benefit from having the slides numbered so
that they can quickly refer to one of them?
• Do you want a background graphic or gradient? If so, you need to
pick something that does not interfere or clash with your content,
for example, colors used in charts.
• Will you need one slide master or more than one? If one slide
design does not suit all of the content, you might need more than
one slide master.
You can change the appearance of slides as you develop the
presentation, but planning ahead will save you time in the long run.
What are slide masters?
A slide master is a slide that is used as the starting point for other
slides. It is similar to a page style in Writer: it controls the basic
formatting of all slides based on it. A slide show can have more than
one slide master.
Note
OOo uses three terms for this one concept. Master slide, slide
master, and master page all refer to a slide which is used to
create other slides. This book uses the term slide master, except
when describing the user interface.
A slide master has a defined set of characteristics, including the
background color, graphic, or gradient; objects (such as logos,
decorative lines, and other graphics) in the background; headers and
footers; placement and size of text frames; and the formatting of text.
30 OpenOffice.org 3.2 Impress Guide