Setting up Storyline with branded themes
When starting a new project with a client, you likely will have to follow some sort of brand standards guide or corporate identity document defining your client’s logo, brand colours and fonts.
Using theme colours
Theme colours in Storyline will determine the default colour options for text, objects fills, object outlines and buttons. When you choose an object or text in Storyline and click Format on the toolbar, you can select a theme colour or shade for its fill and outline from a selection window. You can change the colours in this window to custom colours, which will make it easier for you to maintain branding.
This example shows the built-in default Office theme.
To change to a different built-in theme or create a new, client branded theme, go to the Design tab and click Colors.
Each theme consists of a palette of 8 colours. The first two are the default colours for text and backgrounds, so they usually remain black and white, or two similarly high contrast colours. The remaining colours are accent colours. Selecting one of these themes will apply those colours to everything in your elearning that was coloured using one of the palette colours.
You can also right click to narrow the range of changes for your colours – from applying only to slides using the same master slide, or just to the current slide.
To create a new theme, select the button at the bottom of the Colors dropdown, seen above. This will pop up a theme colours editor window.
To change any of the colours, click on the dropdown next to the colour you wish to change. This will pull up a theme colour window. You can select Eyedropper to pick a colour from anywhere on your screen. This is useful if all you have to go on for a client’s branding is their logo – then you can pull the colours off of the graphic. If you want to change it to a colour not available, or if you have specific colours you want to use, then you select the More colours option.
If your client provided brand colours, you can enter their RBG values or hex code into the html box at the bottom of the window.
So, if this were a client’s colour palette, you could set up your theme colours to look like this.
Once you are satisfied with your colours, enter a name, and select Save. You can always edit your custom theme later by right clicking on it in the colours panel and selecting edit.
Talk to us today about how to create elearning that reinforces your brand while your learners learn! Contact one of our graphic designers today by emailing info@pathwaysinc.ca.
