Whenever a shape is inserted within a PowerPoint 2011 slide, you will discover that it has a blueish white gradient fill (or some other fill). You may insert hundreds of shapes and they all have this same default fill, influenced by the Theme applied to your presentation. If you want, you can change the fill of any shape. You can change it to a solid color fill or even change the fill type altogether to a pattern, texture, or picture.
Learn about different fill types for shapes in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.

