How to make your own Keynote template

You probably know I hate presentation templates. However in last couple of months I have found myself not only using them, but creating them, I have been blown away with what  I have been able to achieve. There is a caveat, my own templates have only one master slide, and it is a blank one. That is all you actually need from a template: one single blank master slide. There are 3 things that blank slide has.

• A font family, like Roboto.
• A background color.
• A color palette.

Here is an example:

I like Roboto for 3 reasons: It is free, it is professional, and it has enough styles and glyphs. I have been starting to use Keynote's Color Palette just a few week and it has helped me speed out my work and keep my work consistent. 

Mini-tutorial

1. Getting down to only 1 master Slide

1.  Let's start from with a default template, say "White". 

2. Click on Show Master Slides.

3. I have added the Rule of Thirds to my white template for better placement of the object on the canvas, however this is not the standard behavior.  Now delete the default slide. A dialog will open asking to choose a one master slide to be the new default, choose the blank slide. The tick mark should now be on the blank master.

4. Delete all other masters.

 2. Setting the new font

The White template's default font is Gill Sans, but I want to change the template to use Roboto.

1. In the master slide add a new text object.

2. Change it to the font,  style, size, and color that you want

3. Click the Menu Format > Advanced > Define Text for All Masters

Done! The next time you add a new Text object it will have the font, style, size and color you have set.
Important! If you added the Text object in the master slide, remember to delete it.

3. Changing the background

1. In the master slide open the Inspector and go to Slide Inpector > Appearance and change the background.

Now you can save your new Theme. Go to Menu File > Save Theme.

4. Adding a new color palette

Color palettes do not belong to a Keynote's theme. You can added in any moment in any visual stack you are working on.

1. Open the color dialog.
2. Click on the color palette tab.
3. Click on the settings > New.
4. Click on the settings > Rename and give it a name you will remember. I'm using city names.

I'm going to choose the colors for the New York palette for a picture of the statue of liberty. I do this via the Image Palette tab, right next to the color palette.

5. Select each color and move it to the grid on the button.

6. Go back to the color palette. Either drag and drop each color and give it a name, or add them with the '+' button. And we are done. 

One last thing. You might want to share that color palette with other people. They are place into your Library/Colors directory: