presentation template in latex

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Share this post, published september 6, 2023 in general, how to use latex for presentations: a comprehensive guide, by scholarly, introduction.

In today's digital age, presentations have become an integral part of communication and knowledge sharing. While there are several tools available for creating presentations, LaTeX stands out as a powerful typesetting system that offers unmatched customization and professional-looking output. In this comprehensive guide, we will explore how to use LaTeX for presentations, covering everything from installation to advanced techniques.

LaTeX, created by Leslie Lamport in the 1980s, is a typesetting system widely used in academia and the scientific community. It was initially developed to simplify the process of creating complex documents, such as research papers and mathematical equations. Over the years, LaTeX has evolved to support presentations, offering a unique combination of elegance and flexibility.

In the past, creating presentations required using tools like Microsoft PowerPoint or Apple Keynote. While these tools offer user-friendly interfaces, they often lack the fine-grained control and typographical precision that LaTeX provides.

Current State

Today, LaTeX has gained popularity among academics, researchers, and professionals who value the ability to create visually appealing and consistent presentations. With the availability of modern LaTeX packages like Beamer, creating stunning slideshows has become easier than ever.

Future State

As technology continues to advance, we can expect LaTeX to further enhance its capabilities for presentations. With the integration of AI and machine learning, LaTeX may offer intelligent features like automatic slide layout suggestions, content generation, and real-time collaboration.

Professional Appearance : LaTeX presentations have a distinct and polished look, making them suitable for academic conferences, research seminars, and business meetings.

Customization : LaTeX allows users to customize every aspect of their presentations, from fonts and colors to layout and animations.

Mathematical Typesetting : LaTeX excels at typesetting mathematical equations, making it an ideal choice for scientific and technical presentations.

Version Control : LaTeX presentations can be easily managed using version control systems like Git, enabling collaborative work and easy tracking of changes.

Cross-Platform Compatibility : LaTeX presentations can be compiled into various formats, including PDF, making them accessible on different devices and operating systems.

Significance

The significance of using LaTeX for presentations lies in its ability to produce high-quality output and maintain consistency across different slides. Unlike traditional presentation tools, LaTeX ensures that the design elements, such as fonts, colors, and layout, remain consistent throughout the entire presentation.

Moreover, LaTeX's focus on typesetting mathematical equations makes it indispensable for fields like mathematics, physics, computer science, and engineering, where precise representation of formulas and symbols is crucial.

Best Practices

To make the most out of LaTeX for presentations, consider the following best practices:

Plan and Structure : Outline your presentation and organize your content into logical sections. This will help you maintain a clear flow of information.

Choose a Suitable Theme : Select a Beamer theme that aligns with the tone and purpose of your presentation. Beamer offers a wide range of pre-defined themes to choose from.

Use Consistent Fonts and Colors : Stick to a consistent set of fonts and colors throughout your presentation to maintain a professional and cohesive look.

Leverage LaTeX Packages : Explore various LaTeX packages that extend the functionality of Beamer, such as TikZ for creating diagrams and animations.

Practice and Rehearse : Familiarize yourself with the LaTeX commands and practice compiling your presentation. Rehearse your presentation to ensure a smooth delivery.

Pros and Cons

Professional and Polished Look : LaTeX presentations have a sophisticated appearance that sets them apart from other tools.

Mathematical Typesetting : LaTeX excels at typesetting mathematical equations, making it a preferred choice for technical presentations.

Customization and Flexibility : LaTeX offers extensive customization options, allowing users to create unique and visually appealing presentations.

Version Control and Collaboration : LaTeX presentations can be easily managed using version control systems, facilitating collaboration and version tracking.

Cross-Platform Compatibility : LaTeX presentations can be compiled into various formats, ensuring compatibility across different devices and operating systems.

Learning Curve : LaTeX has a steeper learning curve compared to traditional presentation tools. It requires familiarity with LaTeX syntax and commands.

Limited WYSIWYG Editing : Unlike WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors, LaTeX requires compiling the code to see the final output.

Time-Consuming : Creating complex presentations in LaTeX can be time-consuming, especially when dealing with intricate layouts and animations.

Less Interactive Features : LaTeX presentations lack some of the interactive features available in other tools, such as embedded videos or live web content.

Dependency on LaTeX Distribution : Using LaTeX for presentations requires installing a LaTeX distribution, which may require additional setup and maintenance.

When considering LaTeX for presentations, it's essential to compare it with other popular tools like Microsoft PowerPoint and Apple Keynote. While LaTeX offers unparalleled customization and typographical control, PowerPoint and Keynote excel in terms of user-friendliness and interactive features.

Method 1: Installation and Setup

• Install a LaTeX distribution like TeX Live or MiKTeX on your computer.
• Choose a LaTeX editor, such as TeXstudio or Overleaf, to write your presentation code.
• Start a new LaTeX document and include the necessary packages for creating presentations.
• Write your presentation content using LaTeX commands and syntax.
• Compile the LaTeX code to generate the presentation output in PDF format.

Method 2: Using Beamer

• Start a new LaTeX document and load the Beamer class.
• Define the document structure, including the title, author, and date.
• Create slides using the frame environment and add content using LaTeX commands.
• Customize the appearance of your slides using Beamer themes, colors, and fonts.
• Compile the LaTeX code to generate the Beamer presentation.

Method 3: Templates

• Explore the wide range of Beamer templates available online.
• Choose a template that suits your presentation style and content.
• Download the template and customize it with your own content.
• Compile the LaTeX code to generate the presentation output.

Method 4: LaTeX Presentation Editors

• Use online LaTeX editors like Overleaf or ShareLaTeX that provide a user-friendly interface for creating presentations.
• Start a new project and select the presentation template.
• Write your presentation content using the built-in LaTeX editor.
• Customize the appearance of your slides using the provided options.

AI Applications

AI can enhance the presentation creation process by providing intelligent suggestions for slide layouts, content organization, and visual design. It can analyze the presenter's speech patterns and provide real-time feedback for improvement.

AI Techniques

AI techniques like natural language processing (NLP) can be used to automatically generate slide content based on the presenter's input. Image recognition algorithms can assist in selecting relevant images and graphics for the presentation.

AI Benefits

• Time-Saving : AI-powered tools can automate repetitive tasks, such as slide layout design and content generation, saving valuable time for presenters.
• Enhanced Creativity : AI can suggest creative ideas for slide design and content arrangement, helping presenters think outside the box.
• Improved Engagement : AI can analyze audience feedback and adapt the presentation in real-time to maximize engagement and impact.

AI Challenges

• Data Privacy : AI tools may require access to personal or sensitive information, raising concerns about data privacy and security.
• Algorithm Bias : AI algorithms may exhibit bias in their suggestions or recommendations, potentially affecting the objectivity and fairness of the presentation.
• Complexity and Reliability : AI systems can be complex and may require continuous updates and maintenance to ensure reliable performance.

Potential Online Apps

• Overleaf : An online LaTeX editor with collaborative features, perfect for creating presentations.
• ShareLaTeX : Another online LaTeX editor that offers real-time collaboration and a user-friendly interface.
• Beamer Theme Gallery : A collection of Beamer themes that can be used to customize the appearance of your LaTeX presentations.
• LaTeX Beamer Templates : A repository of free LaTeX Beamer templates for various presentation styles.
• Slidebean : An AI-powered presentation tool that offers pre-designed templates and content suggestions.

Using LaTeX for presentations offers numerous advantages in terms of customization, professionalism, and typesetting capabilities. While it may have a steeper learning curve compared to traditional presentation tools, the benefits outweigh the challenges. By following best practices and exploring the vast resources available, you can create visually stunning and impactful presentations using LaTeX. Embrace the power of LaTeX and elevate your presentation game to new heights.

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Minimalist LaTeX Template for Academic Presentations

The template produces an academic presentation using LaTeX Beamer . The slide design is minimalist so slides are easy to scan and do not distract from the talk.

• LaTeX template for academic presentations
• Presentation obtained from the template
• The font for text, roman math, and numbers is Source Sans Pro.
• The font for Greek and calligraphic math is Euler.
• No colors are used in the text (only grayscale) to reduce distraction.
• Colors are reserved for graphs and alerts.
• Margins, spacing, and font size are set for comfortable reading.
• There are no frills at the periphery of the slides.

Title slide #

The title slide avoids centered text and is otherwise pretty minimalist. With the command \information{Author}{Date}{URL} the URL of the paper being presented can be specified. When the slides are posted online, the URL also allows readers to go from the slides directly to the paper.

4:3 versus 16:9 aspect ratio #

There has been a shift from slides with a 4:3 aspect ratio to wider slides with a 16:9 aspect ratio. This template sticks to the 4:3 aspect ratio.

First, 4:3 slides are more robust. They are easily readable will all projectors, both new and old. By contrast, the text of 16:9 slides becomes very small when they are displayed on old 4:3 projectors.

Second, 4:3 slides are better at presenting supporting information. And slides are here as support, not as a substitute, for what the speaker is talking about. 4:3 slides force presenters to display only essential information on slides—leading to more effective presentations. 16:9 slides are often used to present two graphs at a time, or two paragraphs at a time, or a graph with some side text. This is confusing and possibly distracting for the audience, who does not know what to look at, and may be looking at the wrong part of the slide. 4:3 slides can only display one graph or one paragraph at a time—focusing the attention of the audience on that one piece of information.

Third, 4:3 slides work better on tablets because most tablets have a 4:3 aspect ratio (iPads for instance). It has becomes very common to read or display slides on tablets, or watch online presentation on tablets. In that context, 4:3 slides display better.

Text font #

Fonts matter in presentations—just as in papers. The font determines the appearance of the entire presentation. For the presentation’s text, the template uses Source Sans Pro , which is one of the free fonts recommended by Matthew Butterick .

Source Sans Pro is a sans-serif font. This is an important feature for presentations, as sans-serif fonts are more readable than fonts with serif in presentations. Another advantage of Source Sans Pro is that it is not part of typical slide templates (unlike Fira Sans for instance). So it feels new and fresh.

A last advantage is that there is a with-serif font in the Source Pro family: Source Serif Pro . This paper template uses Source Serif Pro, which gives presentations and papers produced by the two templates a similar look.

Math font #

LaTeX uses one font for text and other fonts for math. For consistency, the presentation template sticks with Source Sans Pro for roman math. It also uses Source Sans Pro for all the numbers in math, so the commands 1.5 and $1.5$ do not produce different-looking numbers.

There are some sans-serif Greek alphabets, but the letters look unusual and are hard to recognize. So for the Greek letters in math, the template uses the Euler font . These Greek letters look good, have the same thickness as the text letters, and are quite distinctive.

The template also uses the Euler font for calligraphic letters in math. These calligraphic letters fit well with the rest of the text and are very readable.

Font size #

The font size is 12pt. It is easily readable but not too big. It follows Butterick’s advice to choose a font size so as to be able to fit about 12 lines of text on one slide.

The template keeps one font size for all text. So the text is not smaller at different levels of itemized lists—which many Beamer themes impose by default but which I find distracting.

The spacing is generous: around one and a half spacing. This adds white space to the presentation, which helps with reading, and it limits the amount of stuff that can be written on one slide. It is fine to have 6–8 bullet points on a slide as long there are only a few words per bullet point.

The headline is in slightly larger font, in small caps, and aligned left. This follows Butterick’s recommendation to avoid centered headlines. The headline stands out, is easily readable, but does not take all the attention away from the text.

The headline is set against the same white background as the text—not against a bright color background. This choice makes the headline easier to read and less distracting.

No frills at the periphery #

A typical slide produced with Beamer might includes the following elements:

• Outline of the talk above the title
• Small navigation buttons in the bottom right-hand corner
• Names of the authors and title of the talk at the bottom of the slide
• A lot of dark, sharp color at the top and bottom

Such clutter distracts listeners and takes their attention away from the main message of the slide—while conveying no useful information. The audience does not need that information in the middle of the talk. The slides produced by the template are devoid of such frills.

Color scheme #

As Butterick says , color should be used with restraint. A lot of colors, especially bright ones, are distracting. To reduce distraction, the template only uses grayscale. The text is in dark gray, but not black to avoid an uncomfortable degree of contrast. The bullet points are in lighter gray, to blend in the background. (The typical, very bright Beamer bullet points should be avoided as they are distracting.) Colors are reserved for graphs and text alerts.

The template comes with a set of predefined alert commands:

• \al{text} colors the text in magenta.
• \al[n]{text} colors the text in magenta on nth click.
• \alg{text} colors the text in green.
• \alg[n]{text} colors the text in green on nth click.
• \alr{text} colors the text in red.
• \alr[n]{text} colors the text in red on nth click.
• \alb{text} colors the text in blue.
• \alb[n]{text} colors the text in blue on nth click.

The standard alert is set in magenta, which is a color that stands out but unlike red does not induce anger. Apparently :

Magenta is known as a color of harmony and balance. It’s used in Feng Shui and is often considered spiritual.

Of course alerts should be used with restraint.

Navigation buttons #

The template also comes with standard navigation buttons. Navigation buttons should also be used with restraint as hopping from slide to slide with buttons disrupts the flow of the presentation. But buttons are sometimes helpful to go to key backup material.

To point a button to a specific slide, add a label at the top of the slide: \begin{frame}[label=specificSlide] . Then create a button in another slide that points to the labelled slide with the following code snippet: \hyperlink{specificSlide}{\beamergotobutton{Go to a specific slide}} .

An advantage of avoiding colors in the text is that colors in figures stand out.

The template uses a white background for slides because figures have white backgrounds. Figures therefore seamlessly blend into the slide. With a colorful slide background, the figures background would stick out.

There is no need to add a caption to the figure in the template: the slide title makes a great caption.

An easy way to insert figures into the template is to create a PDF file with all the figures that are featured in the presentation. An easy way to do that is to create a Keynote or Powerpoint presentation; insert each figure as a slide background; and save the resulting presentation as PDF. With this method, all the figures have the exact same size. It is also possible to use Keynote or Powerpoint to annotate easily the figures created with an external software (Matlab, R, and so on). (See figures.pdf in the repository.)

It is very easy to produce tables with the template. People sometimes copy-paste table from their paper into their slide. That’s not a good idea since it is not possible to read large tables with tiny numbers on slides. It seems more effective to stick to the same font size, and just present the key numbers from the paper table. If listeners want more details, they will go to the paper.

Section slide #

The template has a command to divide the presentation into sections, which adds structure to longer talks. The command \heading{Section Title} produces a simple section slide, which is similar to the title slide but with the section title only. This slide is a good point to stop, recap what you have already showed, and discuss what you will show next. It is also a good point to take questions.

Last slide #

The template also come with a last slide, which is a just a gray square, and which is called with \lastslide . The last slide can be used instead of conclusion slides—to say thank you, recap in a sentence what the presentation showed, and discuss next steps or related projects.

Conclusion slides are generally ineffective or even mildly upsetting. The audience has been listening for an hour or an hour and a half: they know what they have just been told. At that point they are happy to go on with their day.

Pictograms #

The template comes with a set of pictograms that are easy to use in text mode:

• \up gives ↑
• \down gives ↓
• \flat gives →
• \then gives $\rightsquigarrow$
• \so gives $\Rightarrow$
• \tb gives |

Fancyslides Presentation

This presentation template uses the Fancyslides class which builds on top of the well-known beamer class to give it a modern and concise design. The template is very minimalist with large font sizes and little space for text and would thus be suited for popular presentations by confident speakers. It makes extensive use of background images for slides to provide a strong visual counterpart to the verbal presentation. Content within the presentation is housed within translucent colored circles or rectangles. The former are used for main points or section delineations while the latter are used for larger blocks of text or data slides. Several predefined color options are present within the template and you can also define your own.

Description

This presentation template uses the Fancyslides class which builds on top of the well-known beamer class to give it a modern and concise design. The template is very minimalist with large font sizes and little space for text and would thus be suited for popular presentations by confident speakers. It makes extensive use of background images for slides to provide a strong visual counterpart to the verbal presentation. Content within the presentation is housed within translucent colored circles or rectangles. The former are used for main points or section delineations while the latter are used for larger blocks of text or data slides. The template starts with an example of how to display a main point/section and goes on to provide examples of descriptive plain text, bullet point lists, a numbered list, table, figure and sources slide. Several predefined color options are present within the template and you can also define your own.

The Fancyslides class was created by Pawel Lupkowski . This template uses this class but has been extensively modified for this website by Vel .

Current Version

v1.0 (June 30, 2013)

This template is licensed under a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license. Click here to see what this license means for your use of the template.

Open Template for Free Editing Online

Download template, have a question.

• Ask a Question at LaTeX.org
• Report via Email

This page last updated on: June 30, 2013

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DEV Community

Posted on May 20, 2020 • Updated on May 22, 2020

A custom LaTeX Presentation Template

In my university, we frequently need to present our studies. One option is to build our presentation using LaTeX/Beamer presentation templates.

Beamer is very powerful and practical to build presentations, but we needed a template with different style, with many slides layout, which usually is not provided by the default templates.

After downloading or cloning this repository, you must edit the file presentation.tex to fill the content of the presentation. Firstly, take a look at the "Primary Definitions" part, at the begin of such a .tex , and modify its parties, whether is needed. if you compile the code without changing, it will look like this .

To set the default color of the presentation, you can use the command \setPrimaryColor{color} . This command supports one of the colors defined by the template or any color defined by the user.

To set the logo of the department or institute, from the authors take part, you must use the command \setLogos{path/horizontal_logo}{path/squared_logo} to inform the paths of two files. The first one is the logo in title slide - we recommend using a horizontal image - and the second one is the logo used in the remaining slides - we recommend using a square image.

To define a layout for a slide, you must use the command \setLayout{layoutname} , just informing the name of the layout you would like to use. This command must be placed before the command \begin{frame} of the slide you would like to change.

To define a color for the background of a slide, you must use the command \setBGColor{color} informing a color. This command must be placed before the command \begin{frame} of the slide you would like to change. The color may be one of the template’s colors or a personalized color defined by the user.

Template's Layouts

Summary of the Template's commands

Overleaf is a platform to share and coedit LaTeX projects. This template can be easily used and modified directly in the Overleaf

Top comments (6)

Templates let you quickly answer FAQs or store snippets for re-use.

• Location Stony Brook, USA
• Education Stony Brook University, New York
• Pronouns He/Him
• Work Software Engineer
• Joined Jun 25, 2020

\textbf doesn't work in the template. How do I bold some texts?

• Location Brazil
• Joined May 20, 2020

Hi, I have not faced this problem. Can you detail your case? I suppose that in your case the style is overwritten in beamerthemeUfg.sty but I can not simulate this behavior yet.

I want to have some bold fonts for some normal texts on my slides but couldn't achieve that. What I tried doing was wrapping the texts in \textbf{} command since this boldens texts in normal LaTeX but nothing happened. The texts remained unbold.

This is intriguing, I can't reproduce it. Are you using pdfLaTeX as compiler? If you keep this problem a suggest you to use Overleaf overleaf.com/latex/templates/ufgte...

Check this, I'm using it directly in Overleaf and it is working nicely:

I'm compiling it with XeLaTeX on my ubuntu-based system, Pop!_OS, because it is required I use the Times New Roman font. I will certainly test it out on Overleaf.

Ah, ok. Using pdfLatex, try to use \usepackage{newtxtext,newtxmath} below \usetheme in tex file

To change the font of titles, comment line 11 in sty file

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Minimalist LaTeX Template for Academic Presentations

The template produces an academic presentation using LaTeX with the Beamer class . The presentation adheres to typographical best practices and has a minimalist design. The template is particularly well suited for research presentations. It is designed to convey scientific arguments and results effectively.

• LaTeX template for academic presentations
• Research presentation produced by the template
• The aspect ratio is 4:3.
• There are no frills at the periphery of the slides.
• The font for text, roman math, and numbers is Source Sans Pro.
• The font for monospaced text (including URLs) is Source Code Pro.
• The font for Greek and calligraphic math is Euler.
• The font for blackboard bold is Fourier.
• The font for mathematical symbols is MnSymbol.
• No colors are used in the text (only grayscale) to reduce distraction; colors are reserved for figures and text alerts.
• Margins, spacing, and font size are set for comfortable reading.
• Formatting is specified for theorems, propositions, lemmas, definitions, assumptions, corollaries, and remarks.
• Formatting is specified for figures and tables.
• Section slides and final slide can easily be inserted into the presentation.

4:3 versus 16:9 aspect ratio #

There has been a shift from slides with a 4:3 aspect ratio to wider slides with a 16:9 aspect ratio. This template sticks to the traditional 4:3 aspect ratio.

First, 4:3 slides are better at effectively presenting supporting information. And slides are here as support, not as a substitute, for what the speaker is talking about. 4:3 slides force presenters to display only essential information on slides—leading to more effective presentations. 16:9 slides are often used to present two graphs at a time, or two paragraphs at a time, or a graph with some side text. This is confusing and possibly distracting for listeners, who do not know what to look at, and may be looking at the wrong part of the slide. 4:3 slides can only display one graph or one paragraph at a time—focusing the attention of the audience on that one piece of information.

Second, lines of text on 16:9 slides are often excessively long. The lines cannot be read at one glance, so reading them distracts from the presentation.

Third, 4:3 slides are more robust. They are easily readable will all projectors, both new and old. By contrast, the text of 16:9 slides becomes very small when they are displayed on old 4:3 projectors.

Fourth, 4:3 slides work better on tablets because most tablets have a 4:3 aspect ratio (iPads for instance). It has becomes very common to read or display slides on tablets, or watch online presentation on tablets. In that context, 4:3 slides display better.

Sometimes, however, host institutions or conferences require presenters to use 16:9 aspect ratio. The template can be adjusted to produce such slides. Just add the aspectratio=169 option to the \documentclass command. Specifically, to produce a 16:9 presentation, the first line of presentation.tex should be:

Text font #

Fonts matter in presentations—just as in papers. The font determines the appearance and readability of the entire presentation. For the presentation’s text, the template uses Source Sans Pro , which is one of the free fonts recommended by Matthew Butterick .

Source Sans Pro is a sans-serif font. This is an important feature, as sans-serif fonts are more readable than fonts with serif in presentations. Another advantage of Source Sans Pro is that it is not part of typical slide templates (unlike Fira Sans for instance), so it feels new and fresh. And since Source Sans Pro was designed in the last decade, it also feels modern.

Moreover, the Source Pro family includes a nice monospaced font: Source Code Pro . The template uses Source Code Pro as monospaced font—giving the monospaced text and regular text a similar look. The monospaced font is used in particular to typeset URLs.

Another advantage of Source Sans Pro is that it comes with a broad range of weight. For instance, the template uses the semibold font weight in places. To activate the semibold font instead of the usual bold font, use \sbseries and \textsb{} instead of \bfseries and \textbf{} .

A last advantage of Source Sans Pro is that there is a with-serif font in the Source Pro family: Source Serif Pro . This paper template uses Source Serif Pro, which gives the presentations and papers produced by the two templates a similar look.

Math fonts #

LaTeX uses one font for text and other fonts for math. For consistency, the template sticks with Source Sans Pro for roman math . It also uses Source Sans Pro for all the digits in math and basic punctuation (such as . , ? , % , ; , and , ), so very basic mathematical expressions look the same in math and text. For example, the commands 3.5\% and $3.5\%$ produce the same results.

Greek letters #

There are some sans-serif Greek alphabets, but the letters look unusual and are hard to recognize. So for the Greek letters in math, the template uses the Euler font . These Greek letters look good, have the same thickness and height as the text letters, and are distinctive. For consistency, neither uppercase nor lowercase Greek letters are italicized.

All the standard Greek letters are available. A few variants are available as well: \varepsilon , \varpi , \varphi , and \vartheta . The variants \varrho , \varsigma , and \varkappa are not available with the Euler font.

Calligraphic letters #

The template also uses the Euler font for calligraphic letters in math. These calligraphic letters fit well with the other fonts and are very readable. The calligraphic letters are produced with the \mathcal{} command.

Blackboard-bold letters #

The template uses the Fourier font as blackboard-bold font. It is cleaner than the default blackboard-bold font as it does not have serif. And it is slightly thicker than the default font so it matches well with Source Sans Pro and the Euler letters. The blackboard-bold letters are produced with the \mathbb{} command.

Bold characters #

In the template, it is possible to bold any mathematical character (except blackboard-bold letters). This can be done using the \bm{} command in math.

Mathematical symbols #

Finally, the template use the MnSymbol font for the symbols used in math mode. The default Computer Modern symbols are too light and thin in comparison to the Source Sans Pro and Euler letters, and as a result do not mix well with them. The advantage of the MnSymbol font is that its symbols are thicker, so they mix better with the letters. The symbols are also less curly, which gives them a more modern feel. 1

Font size #

The font size is 11pt. It is easily readable but not too big. It follows Butterick’s advice to choose a font size so as to be able to fit about 12 lines of text on one slide.

The template keeps one font size for all text. So the text is not smaller at different levels of itemized lists—which many Beamer themes impose by default but which is both distracting and clunky.

Line spacing #

The line spacing is 150% of the point size. This adds white space to the presentation, which helps with reading, and it limits the amount of stuff that can be written on one slide. There is a small amount of additional vertical spacing between items in lists to separate the items better.

Text margins #

The information on the title slide, section titles, frame titles, and regular text are all aligned along the same left margin. (This requires various adjustments as these elements are not usually aligned in Beamer themes.) Lists are slightly indented to the right.

Color scheme #

As Butterick says , color should be used with restraint. A lot of colors, especially bright ones, is distracting. To reduce distraction, the template only uses grayscale. The text is in dark gray (85% black), not complete black, to avoid an uncomfortable degree of contrast. The list items—bullet points and numbers—are in lighter gray, to blend in the background. 2 Colors are reserved for figures and text alerts.

The typical, bright Beamer bullet points, headers, and footers, should be avoided as they are distracting.

No frills at the periphery #

A typical slide produced with Beamer might includes the following elements:

• Outline of the talk above the title
• Small navigation buttons in the bottom right-hand corner
• Names of the authors and title of the talk at the bottom of the slide

Such clutter distracts listeners and takes their attention away from the main message of the slide—while conveying no useful information. The audience does not need that information in the middle of the talk. The slides produced by the template are devoid of such frills.

In particular, the pesky navigation buttons are eliminated by placing \setbeamertemplate{navigation symbols}{} in presentation.sty .

Slide numbers #

By default the slides are not numbered. This seems better for most presentations. Displaying slide numbers does nothing but makes the audience jittery at the thought of the sheer number of slides that remain to be covered in the talk.

But for anyone who wants to share the slide deck for comments, or who gives a presentation specifically to collect feedback, it might be helpful to have slides numbers—so the comments can be precisely linked to a slide. To introduce page numbers on slide, just uncomment the line \setbeamertemplate{footline}[frame number] in presentation.sty .

Once slide numbers are inserted at the bottom of all slides, it is possible to remove the slide number from the title slide. To do that, use \frame[plain]{\titlepage} instead of \frame{\titlepage} in presentation.tex . The page numbers will start appearing on the second slide.

Title slide #

The title slide avoids centered text and is otherwise pretty minimalist. The title is in large font (21pt), in small caps, and accentuated by a black line. Authors and dates are in slightly larger font than the text (12pt). The title slide also includes the permanent URL of the paper being presented. When the presentation is posted online, the URL allows readers to go from the presentation directly to the paper. The URL is displayed in small font (9pt) and gray so is not too obtrusive.

• To specify the presentation authors, use the command \information{First Author, Second Author} .
• To add the location of the presentation or a date to the title page, add a second argument to the command: \information{First Author, Second Author}{Location -- Date} .
• The command takes an optional argument to specify the paper URL: \information[URL]{First Author, Second Author}{Location -- Date} .

Slide headline #

The headline is in somewhat larger font than the text (14pt), in small caps, and aligned left. This follows Butterick’s recommendation to avoid centered headlines. The headline stands out, is easily readable, but does not take all the attention away from the text.

The headline is set against the same white background as the text—not against a bright color background. This choice makes the headline easier to read and less distracting.

The template comes with a set of predefined alert commands:

• \al{text} colors the text in magenta.
• \al[n]{text} colors the text in magenta on nth click.
• \alg{text} colors the text in green.
• \alg[n]{text} colors the text in green on nth click.
• \alr{text} colors the text in red.
• \alr[n]{text} colors the text in red on nth click.
• \alb{text} colors the text in blue.
• \alb[n]{text} colors the text in blue on nth click.

The standard alert is set in magenta, which is a color that stands out but unlike red does not induce anger. Apparently :

A color that, for centuries, has captivated many, magenta is a mixture of violet and red. Magenta is known as a color of harmony and balance. It’s used in Feng Shui and is often considered spiritual.

Of course alerts should be used with restraint.

Theorems and other results #

As is standard, the text of theorems is in italic—providing subtle emphasis. The theorem label is in semibold—again providing subtle emphasis. To further emphasize theorems and clearly separate them from surrounding text, the template places theorems in a light gray rectangle with rounded corners.

For consistency, propositions, lemmas, assumptions, definitions, and so on, are formatted just like theorems. The template comes with the following predefined environments:

• Theorems: \begin{theorem} ... \end{theorem}
• Propositions: \begin{proposition} ... \end{proposition}
• Lemmas: \begin{lemma} ... \end{lemma}
• Corollaries: \begin{corollary} ... \end{corollary}
• Definitions: \begin{definition} ... \end{definition}
• Assumptions: \begin{assumption} ... \end{assumption}
• Remarks: \begin{remark} ... \end{remark}

An advantage of avoiding colors in the text is that colors in figures stand out.

The template uses a white background for slides because figures have white backgrounds. Figures therefore seamlessly blend into the slide. With a colorful slide background, the figures background would stick out.

Figures are centered by default.

The template is designed so the slide headline is used to caption the figure. It is not designed to accommodate a separate caption below the figure.

An easy way to insert figures into the template is to create a PDF file with all the figures that are featured in the presentation. To do that, create a Keynote or Powerpoint presentation; insert each figure as a slide background; and save the resulting presentation as PDF. With this method, all the figures have the exact same size. It is also possible to use Keynote or Powerpoint to annotate the figures created with an external software (Matlab, R, Python). The file figures.pdf in the repository was created from MATLAB graphs by this method.

The code for a slide with a basic figure is the following:

The code for a slide with multiple figures displayed sequentially is the following:

People sometimes copy-paste tables from their papers into their slides. That’s not a good idea since it is not possible to read large tables with tiny numbers on slides. It seems more effective to keep the same font size in tables as in the text, and just present in the slide tables the key numbers from the paper tables. If listeners want more details, they will go to the paper.

Tables are centered by default, and fill the slide.

Here too, the template is designed so the slide headline is used to caption the table. It is not designed to accommodate a separate caption below the table.

The code for a slide with a basic table is the following:

Section slide #

The template has a command to divide the presentation into sections, which adds structure to longer talks. To produces the section slide, just use the following code:

The text on the section slide is in small caps, and with moderately large font (17pt).

This section slide is a good point to stop, recap what has already been showed, and discuss what comes ahead. It is also a good point to take questions.

Pictograms #

The template comes with a set of shortcuts to display common pictograms in text mode:

• \then gives $\rightsquigarrow$
• \so gives $\Rightarrow$
• \up gives ↑
• \down gives ↓
• \flat gives →

Navigation buttons #

The template comes with navigation buttons. The buttons have white background, just like the slides. The button text is in light gray and small font (9pt). The buttons blend in the slides, unlike the typical, bright Beamer buttons that stand out and distract from the rest of the content.

Navigation buttons should be used with restraint as hopping from slide to slide with buttons disrupts the flow of the presentation. But buttons are sometimes helpful to go to key backup material.

Here is how to point a button to a specific slide:

• Add a label at the top of the specific slide: \begin{frame}[label=specificSlide] .
• Create a button in another slide that points to the labelled slide: \hyperlink{specificSlide}{\beamergotobutton{Go to specific slide}} .

Slide breaks #

Each slide should be prepared and planned carefully. There should be a reason why material is on a certain slide rather than on another slide. Nevertheless, sometimes, a slide contains too much material to fit on one slide, and it does not matter too much how the material is split across successive slides. One example is a slide with a long list of references. Another example is a slide with a long mathematical derivation. In these cases, the option allowframebreaks can be used to split slides automatically, using the following code:

Each successive slide is automatically numbered with an Arabic number in square brackets: [1], [2], [3], and so on. As the Beamer user guide notes, however, the allowframebreaks option invites the creation of endless presentations that resemble more a paper projected on the wall than a presentation. So the option should only be used sporadically, in the specific cases mentioned above.

Last slide #

The template also come with a last slide, which is a just a gray square, and which is called with the command \lastslide . The last slide can be used instead of conclusion slides—to say thank you, to recap what the presentation showed, and to discuss next steps or related projects.

Conclusion slides are generally ineffective and even mildly upsetting. The audience has been listening for an hour or an hour and a half. They know what they have just been told. At that point they are happy to go on with their day without having to hear again a summary of the same material.

The MnSymbol package is incompatible with the amssymb package. So it is not possible to load amssymb with the template. Neither should it be required since MnSymbol provides a vast collection of symbols.  ↩︎

The template customizes formatting for three levels of itemized and numbered lists. More deeply nested lists should be avoided as they are a sign that the presentation’s organization is too messy.  ↩︎

For Beautiful Presentations

— use powerpoint beamer —.

LEARN BEAMER

What is Beamer?

Beamer is a LaTeX document class that is used for creating presentations. This class offers several pre-designed templates and a set of interesting features for making customized ones.

American pronunciation

British pronunciation, origin of beamer.

This class is a great contribution of Till Tantau  where the first version of the Beamer presentation was published in public on the Ph.D. defense of Till. As per the request of some of his colleagues, he included the package in CTAN . in March 2003. It was considered as the first official release of “Initial Version”.

Since 2007, this package was not maintained and in April 2010, Till handed the maintenance responsibility to   Joseph Wright and Vedran Miletic .

At the present, it’s mainly samcarter doing the work and keep maintaining it by refining codes, fixing bugs, including new features, and providing supports to users, but Joseph Wright has the lead formally, e.g. does the releases to CTAN.

If you are interested in the Beamer package and contribute through feedback please visit  https://github.com/josephwright/Beamer . The User Guide of 247 pages (version no 3.6.3) of this class provides enormous examples and descriptions of different commands.

Beamer Output

The ultimate output of any Latex Beamer presentation is naturally a PDF (Portable Document Format) file .

PDF is independent of:

• hardware (i.e. any type of printer, iPad, E-reader, smartphones, projector, etc.) and
• software (Windows & Apple operating systems).

which makes this format good for both printouts and presentations.

Features of Beamer class

• Beamer is compatible with pdflatex , dvips , lualatex , and xelatex .
• You can use most of the standard commands of LaTeX for Beamer presentation as well.
• A user can create overlays easily and add dynamic effects.
• Have features for creating both slides and handouts.
• Easy customization of Beamer Themes, which allow you to change the appearance of your presentation to accomplish your purposes. For example, users can change layouts, colors, fonts, bullet styles in any presentation globally .
• Beamer handles theorems , proofs , definitions , and itemization in a structured approach, along with flexible customization.
• The Beamer class separates the style as well as content and ensures the portability in source code , implementation, and output.
• Like LaTeX, Beamer has excellent mathematical and scientific typesetting capabilities without exporting any external tools.
• It also supports hypertext features and cross-referencing capabilities.

Drawbacks of Beamer class

• Some users may feel the learning curve is steeper, especially while experimenting with macros and exploit customization.
• Some command syntax is tough to remember and type.
• Sometimes, positioning floating objects like images, long tables seem complex to a group of users.
• Sharing with WYSIWYG content is difficult, as the mainstream in a commercial environment is using MS PowerPoint.

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Beautiful presentations done with TeX and related systems

I recently had to persuade a fellow student that you can create beautiful presentations with LaTeX and beamer. Luckily, I already had some examples. But I'm sure that there are better presentations, not necesarily done with beamer but with TeX and related systems. I remembered that I saw some beautiful examples in other questions . So I would like to get a persuasive list of presentations so that I can simply send people who are in doubt about the power of TeX to these answers.

Which beautiful presentations done with TeX and related systems do you know?

• at least one screenshot (I guess one of the title page and an example page with width 300px would be good),
• a link to the complete source code (if possible)
• and a link to the rendered PDF (when you like, I could add it to my examples on GitHub )
• presentations
• 5 LaTeX + beamer is not always the best choice for presentations. There are other options we well......for example ConTeXt :) –  Aditya Commented Mar 28, 2013 at 19:17
• @Aditya yes, I was thinking exactly the same since this question was opened. It would be nice to have a showcase of beautiful presentations, not necessarily done using beamer . –  Gonzalo Medina Commented Mar 28, 2013 at 19:21
• 1 Look at the files ending with -s.pdf at Pragma Ade's website. I use ConTeXt for most my presentations as well (see here ). In general, it is much easier for me to get the look that I want with ConTeXt than with LaTeX + beamer. –  Aditya Commented Mar 28, 2013 at 19:23
• @Aditya and Gonzalo Medina: I've changed the title. I wasn't aware of other LaTeX-like possibilities to produce presentations. I know that you can create astonishing presentations with impressive.js , but that would be off-topic for this site. –  Martin Thoma Commented Mar 28, 2013 at 19:26
• 2 would it be ok to also share links where beamer themes can be downloaded like this ? –  d-cmst Commented Mar 29, 2013 at 7:47

6 Answers 6

Latex beamer.

I've written a short introduction to LaTeX beamer .

Here are some better themes that the standard ones (thanks dcmst ).

English language course

• Source (Not complete, as my university doesn't allow me to publish the theme :-/ )
• Rendered PDF

Tutorial for programming

• Source: Currently not available, I'm sorry
• What's nice in this presentation: Source code was saved included only by giving a path to the source file.

ICPC Presentation

• Logo was created with instacode
• What's nice in this presentation:
• The visualization of the graph algorithms are done with TikZ
• Four people could work simultaneously on the presentation with no overhead
• 8 @MarcvanDongen: The idea was to give a template for answers that others could use: A title (e.g. Context), perhaps some links that give introductions to pages how you can create presentations with the package (Context, beamer or what else there might be), screenshots that show how it could look like, links to rendered PDFs to get a more detailed impression and perhaps a hint why people might want to try the certainly more complex TeX* approach than just simply using Powerpoint. –  Martin Thoma Commented Mar 30, 2013 at 19:58
• 1 Also, this allows me to send this question and answer to people who ask me "Why don't we just use Powerpoint for our presentation?" –  Martin Thoma Commented Mar 30, 2013 at 19:59
• @MartinThoma Links to github don't work. Can you fix? –  user4035 Commented Feb 28, 2016 at 11:04
• @user4035 The PDF of ICPC is not online anymore (I want to make the repository not too big - if you know a good place where I could upload the PDF let me know). However, I fixed the link to the source. Thanks for mentioning it! –  Martin Thoma Commented Feb 28, 2016 at 11:43
• @MartinThoma What theme does your "Tutorial for Programming" use? I'm most interested in linking to code files, that seems very very useful. –  Greg Hilston Commented Oct 5, 2018 at 17:57

Sometimes I give presentations at local PechaKucha events. Pecha Kucha is a form of presentation with strict rules: you have 20 slides and every slide appears for exact 20 seconds.

Unfortuntely they use PowerPoint. So I create my slides in LaTeX, convert the single pdf-pages into png-files and use them pictures as fullscreen pictures in a PowerPoint presentation.

Doing that I follow the rules I talked about when answering this question: Make beamer not look like beamer

Most important rule: you are the presentation - the presentation should be useless without your talk.

Here are some of the slides from my last PK-presentation:

• Do you mind to share your sources ? I would be interested in them. –  Ludovic Kuty Commented Jun 30, 2015 at 7:40
• Impressive. Would also appreciate to have a look at the source files. –  s__C Commented Oct 30, 2015 at 9:58
• Sorry, forgot to answer. The presentation is about making fun of a political flyer I found in my letterbox. I'm afraid the source doesn't look that impressive. It is just positioning of pics and textboxes and some commercial fonts. I'm not sure about the copyright of the pictures. Would you accept, if I put the sources without any pics in my dropbox? Could also provide a link to a presentation video so you'll have an impression how the finished presentation was supposed to look even if you don't have the pics. –  schmendrich Commented Nov 4, 2015 at 10:34
• @schmendrich of course, just the source would be more than fine. –  s__C Commented Nov 15, 2015 at 10:42
• 3 The source without the images: dropbox.com/s/k09phec4uvmf73z/PK_source.zip?dl=0 and a video of the presentation: dropbox.com/s/cpggdl32bfcp0ru/… –  schmendrich Commented Nov 19, 2015 at 9:32

Currently I'm working on my own XeLaTeX Beamer Template. It isn't finished yet, especially the colortheme has to be overworked. My goal was to make it as minimalistic as possible without losing to much information like the section name and the page counter.

Here are some screens (from an example presentation):

You can get the source code and all previews from github .

Simple Theme

I have been working on a simple and minimal theme for beamer. It is a work in progress which is hosted here .

I am not focusing on making a theme which is suitable for everyone. Personally, I think that it is not possible to make a "one fits all theme". I am keeping the main theme quite minimal. It just provides a background (light, dark and white variants) and a color scheme for fonts. The idea is to keep focus on content and presentation style. The theme should get out of the way. Instead, I am trying to make some presentation tools which can be used (choice is with user) along with the theme to make a good presentation. This will be more clear if you look at some examples in sample presentation .

The code is by no means the most efficient or optimized. I am still learning as I write more and more code (I borrow ideas and code heavily from StackExchange community - Thanks folks! ). I'll be adding more generic commands to it as and when I get new ideas. Meanwhile, any ideas or suggestions are most welcome.

• 1 a small comment: you don't need graphicx or xcolor with beamer –  samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz Commented Aug 9, 2017 at 14:22
• Ah, I didn't know that. I have removed them now. Thanks. –  Adarsh Commented Aug 9, 2017 at 14:30
• You're welcome! Its a nice theme! –  samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz Commented Aug 9, 2017 at 14:32

elsdoc-screen.pdf , the slides that accompany the elsarticle package, are quite stunning imo. They're not on CTAN (there's another beautiful A4 doc that uses grid , I think), you can find them on River Valley's wiki , together with the A4 version. There's also the source for the A4, but not for the presentation, I've mailed them a request for it and I'll post it here if I can.

This presentation I've found on a related question uses the pdfscreen package (of which existence Ignasi here below made me aware). A photograph by Ansel Adams is so sure-shot for a beautiful title page it's almost cheap.

• 1 Just a guess. They are probably done with some tool similar to pdfscreen authored by CV Radhakrishnan from River Valley Technologies –  Ignasi Commented Jun 16, 2015 at 10:52

You may find useful my Programming-Languages course , with about 1000 frames, all done in beamer. Source is available upon request.

There are just too many things to show. You can start with this, which is the full book (185 pages) generated with the article mode:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/gwbaa1axw4mx300/AACfJjM1cHZeqlH_J8CJFc0Wa/%D7%97%D7%95%D7%91%D7%A8%D7%AA%20%D7%94%D7%A9%D7%A7%D7%A4%D7%99%D7%9D/Article/_article-%2B-%2B.pdf?dl=0

• 1 You should at least post two screenshots: One of the title page and one of any page you like within the presentation. Like that, your answer becomes useless when the link is dead. –  Martin Thoma Commented Nov 27, 2015 at 14:58
• Will try to embed an animation. Any tips? –  Yossi Gil Commented Nov 27, 2015 at 15:13
• 2 The links to file on Dropbox are dead. Consider fixing the link or deleting the post. –  Torbjørn T. Commented Sep 29, 2016 at 14:01
• 1 You may have put the files on Google Drive, but you haven't changed the URLs in the post. –  Torbjørn T. Commented Oct 2, 2016 at 9:05
• 1 @YossiGil, you forgot to post the link you mentioned (to the Google Drive). Everybody are eager to see it :-) –  dmitry_romanov Commented Feb 28, 2017 at 1:48

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template for academic presentations in LaTeX

moritzgoldbeck/presentation_template

Folders and files.

Repository files navigation

Latex presentation template.

This is my standard presentation template. It is produced for academic presentations using LaTeX and follows a minimalistic design approach . In particular, I tried to reduce all (in my view) unneccessary clutter and keep slides readable and straight-forward with a minimal number of design elements. The template structure follows the usual structure of presentations in applied micro-economics but can, of course, be adapted to other use cases.

Here are some sample slides: template_presentation.pdf

Please feel free to use and share.

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Communicating and sharing your work effectively with colleagues, supervisors and the general public often requires the preparation of a suitable presentation, tailored to that audience. These templates make it easy to create such a presentation, and the resulting set of slides is available for distribution in PDF format – perfect for sharing before or after your lecture, seminar or talk.

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Gallery — Presentation

Gallery Items tagged Presentation

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Communicating and sharing your work effectively with colleagues, supervisors and the general public often requires the preparation of a suitable presentation, tailored to that audience. These templates make it easy to create such a presentation, and the resulting set of slides is available for distribution in PDF format – perfect for sharing before or after your lecture, seminar or talk.

Related Tags

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