Create Custom theme colors in Storyline to speed up the eLearning development process. The Custom Theme Colors feature in Articulate Storyline 360 allows you designate default colors for all the elements of your projects (e.g., text, shapes, hyperlinks, slide background colors and more). Then, when you insert the element onto a slide, the element already has the desired color. You don’t waste time manually changing the colors of each element. This post shows how to create, apply, edit and delete Custom theme colors. In addition, the post includes a helpful Theme Color Selector template you can download and use to organize the elements and corresponding colors.
Rema Merrick is an instructional designer and e-Learning developer based in sunny, St. Petersburg, Florida. She specializes in the development of Articulate Storyline and Rise e-Learning courses. She’s been in the industry since 2014 and holds a master of science in Instructional Technology from Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania. Her hobbies include running, practicing yoga and participating in Articulate’s E-Learning Heroes E-Learning Challenges.
Author: Rema Merrick, MSIT
Published: January 24, 2023
Time to Read: 5 minutes
Once you identify the project default colors for each element, it should take less than 15 minutes to designate them in the Custom Theme Color editor.
Creating new theme colors for a project doesn’t require any specific prior Storyline knowledge.
To create Custom theme colors in Storyline requires two major steps: 1) identifying the 16 colors for each of the element categories; and 2) setting the default colors in the Custom Theme Color editor. Applying Custom theme colors to a project involves three steps. Editing and deleting Custom theme colors entails four steps for each task.
Consider the color palette you plan to use in the project. For example, the palette may be based on your company’s brand colors found in a style guide. Using the color palette, choose a color for each of the following 16 elements in the project.
The text color for slides and shapes with dark backgrounds
The text color for slides and shapes with light backgrounds
The background color for slides with light backgrounds
The background color for slides with dark backgrounds
The fill color for shapes, captions, check box styles 1 and 2, radio button styles 1 and 2, and markers
Five colors to access in style galleries and color selectors; these are colors that you can quickly access at any time to change the default color of an element
The text color for hyperlinks
The hover color for buttons and answer choices (does not include drag items, drop-down questions and Likert scale questions); the fill color for hotspots
The colors for correct quiz elements (i.e., icons, review banners)
The colors for incorrect quiz elements (i.e., icons, review banners)
The fill color for buttons
The fill color for check box styles 3 and 4, radio styles 3 and 4; the hover color for drag items, drop-down questions and Likert scale questions
Use the Theme Color template provided in this post to help you organize the elements and corresponding default colors. The download form is located at the end of the post.
These instructions show one way to apply Custom theme colors for a project. There are other ways, not shown in the post, to apply a custom color theme to a project.
Notice the active theme colors for the project appears on the far left of the Themes display.
This post showed how to create, apply, edit and delete Custom theme colors in Articulate Storyline. Creating Custom theme colors involves two main steps: 1) identifying the color of each of the 16 categories of elements; and, 2) setting the default colors in the Custom Theme Color editor in Storyline. You may find it helpful to use the Theme Color Selector template provided in this post. The template helps to organize the elements and their corresponding default colors.
Please share your comments regarding the project and development process. I would love your feedback on what you found helpful, what you found confusing and what additional information would have been more helpful.
If you have any questions about this article or our company, please contact Rema at rema@remalmerrick.com.
This blog was founded and is operated by Rema Merrick, instructional designer and Articulate Storyline 360 e-Learning developer. She has been a staple in the e-Learning industry since 2014. Her exciting career started after she received her master of science in Instructional Technology from Bloomsburg University. When she's not participating in Articulate’s E-Learning Heroes E-Learning Challenges, you can find her practicing yoga, jogging or biking in sunny, St. Petersburg, FL.
Copyright © 2019-2024. Rema L Merrick.
All rights reserved.