Chart Area Appearance Options
In the charts you create within PowerPoint, the Chart Area doesn't show any fill or any kind of formatting unless you have applied a particular Chart Style -- in fact the Chart Area is completely transparent with no fill or outline attribute. This default status works well most of the time since essentially the Chart Area is just the area above which all chart elements are placed. However, you can opt to format this area as required -- this is quite easy and entails just a few clicks.

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Chart Area Font Options
By default, text used within a chart is not really formatted and looks very simple. Note that the font style used by default is derived from the information available within the Theme or template used for the slides. Now you really should not change the text formats within your chart unless you have a compelling reason to do so because there's no reason to make appearances inconsistent just because PowerPoint allows you to do so!

Add Gradient Fills to Shapes
Gradient fills are typically blended fills between two or more colors that graduate from one color to another. Although shapes filled with gradients look so incredible, make sure you choose the colors that form the gradient very carefully. PowePoint's basic gradients are all very useable since they just blend a basic color with white or black making the result lighter or darker.

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More Gradients
Add a quick gradient fill to your shape, and you may run into limitations -- for one, PowerPoint's default gradient options choose all the gradient colors for you -- and all available gradients seem to be based on the same color family. While this sort of restraint does keep your slides looking consistent and aesthetic, they also seem to prevent you from playing more with gradients. To play more, you must choose the More Gradients option -- this option leads you to a detailed gradient editor that's capable of making changes to the gradient type, direction, angle, color, etc. We explain these extra gradient options available within PowerPoint 2013 in this tutorial.

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Gradient Stops
Once you add gradient fills to shapes in PowerPoint 2013, you may want to make the gradient fill look a little different -- or even a whole lot different. Yes, you can use the More Gradients option to add different types of gradients as fills to the shapes but that only provides more gradient fill types, and does not let you customize the colors within the gradient. In this tutorial, we'll step into a little more detail and show you how gradient stops work. When you are done with this tutorial, you can create your own gradients, or edit existing ones.