Keynote Theme Advice if You’re Blind

In order to narrow this down, I took a look at Apple’s best practices for creating a presentation on a Mac for use on an iPad. They suggest only 10 of the possible 44 options in Keynote for the Mac. In describing these themes, I chose to explain the colors, the contrast, and the overall feeling you get when looking at them. I hope this is of some help in choosing a theme if you’re blind. You can read Apple’s Best Practices here:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4114

Black

Back background, white text in Gill Sans. Very stark and dramatic, font is professional. Very high contrast, good for presenting in a bright room.

Blackboard

Medium gray uneven background like chalk dust left on the blackboard. White text is actually the chalkboard font which is too playful to be used for a serious presentation in a professional environment. Not too bad for a well lit room

Craft

Very informal. Turquoise background with little dotted lines swirling around on it like the track an ant might make. Text is on scraps of paper in different colors carelessly angled on the page with uneven borders as though cut with scissors. Very aptly named – perfect for a scrap boarding type of presentation. Wild contrast in the colors of the text boxes

Gradient

Dramatic background with a gradient of jet black to a dark blueish grey (lighter on the bottom). Text is white in Gill Sans which is very professional. Definitely appropriate for the work environment, nothing playful or fun about this one (I like it).

Harmony

Title slide is a light turquoise, looks like fancy stationary with a weathered edge. Swirly little designs on it give it a feminine yet classy look. Text is Dark turquoise with nice contrast. However, normal pages are a crème color of the same texture along with the torn edges. Brown text on the normal pages. I find it a bit distracting that the cover slide is a different color, but the theme is elegant (again with a feminine feel)

Modern Portfolio

This theme is simply white with black text. No color, no texture, no styling at all. Helvetica text makes it about as boring as you could choose. Professional but nothing interesting here.

Moroccan

Background of title slide is a medium to dark blue with a border of flower imprints into the blue . Text is a high contrast gold in a professional Hoefler Text font. Normal pages are rather distracting. There’s a light beige rectangle with gold text title that isn’t of high enough contrast for my tastes, bullet text is more of a medium grey, bullets themselves are a 6 pointed star, and on top of all that the beige rectangle holding the slide info is set above a baby blue textured flower pattern background. Please don’t ever use this one!

Parchment

Parchment looks like the theme Indiana Jones would choose for his presentation of his adventures. The background looks like sand, with a parchment piece of paper that’s rather dingy and dirty looking set on top. The font is fittingly called Papyrus, which looks like it was scratched out with a fairly ineffective fountain pen. A more masculine but still fun theme, not for a serious presentation. Contrast would be difficult in a brightly lit room because of the faintness of the papyrus text.

Showroom

Showroom is almost as plain as Modern Portfolio. Then background is a very pale blue with a very slight gradient, and a font called Gill Sans Light. This is very thin but classy looking font, not a high contrast to the background. Good on a TV or display but a weak projector might be problematic. Classy and professional but not terribly interesting.

White

White is nearly identical to Modern Portfolio – it’s simply white with black helvetica text. good contrast, but again light backgrounds don’t do as well in highly lit rooms. This is also a boring choice, but you could dress it up with logos and images.

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