[Tex/LaTex] Designing a beamer theme from scratch : what to put in inner/outer/color

beamer

I am trying to impement a beamer theme from my institution's powerpoint theme.
I have started from Design a custom Beamer theme from scratch, but I have some issues.

First is I do not understand what is the logic behind the different files : in addition to outer inner color, I have also seen a font file.
So I do not understant what is supposed to go where, and perhaps more importantly, how they interact with each other.

Best Answer

Beamer Theme Matrix can help you to understand how it works. It shows how different color themes change every main theme. If the whole theme (inner, outer, font, color) was defined inside a unique file, you should modify this file. Being everything divided in independent fragments, just selecting a combination of them provides a new aspect for your presentation.

Section 15.1 Five Flavour Themes in beameruserguide clearly explain differences between them. It's easy to imagin what color and font themes do. inner themes define how elements inside a slide (items, enumerate, blocks, ...) look while outer themes define headlines, footlines, sidebar, ...

In fact, all main themes are defined as a combination of inner, outer, font and color themes. Just two examples, AnnArbor theme is defined with

\useinnertheme[shadow=true]{rounded}
\useoutertheme{infolines}
\usecolortheme{wolverine}

\setbeamerfont{block title}{size={}}
\setbeamercolor{titlelike}{parent=structure,bg=yellow!85!orange}

while Copenhagen is

\useoutertheme{split}
\useinnertheme{rounded}

\usecolortheme{whale}
\usecolortheme{orchid}

\setbeamerfont{block title}{size={}}

Although beamer works this way, you don't have to follow it. If you want a constant theme, with very few options, everything can be defined inside a main theme file. If your theme is called "mytheme", define everything inside a file called beamerthememytheme.sty file and store it into your working folder while you are testing it. As soon as your theme is ready, move it to your local tree.

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Beamer option definition

Let us suppose you named your main file beamerthemeX.sty. There you place your option as:

\DeclareOptionBeamer{conference}{\PassOptionsToPackage{conference=#1}{beamerouterthemeX}}
\ProcessOptionsBeamer

Then in your beamerouterthemeX.sty:

\DeclareOptionBeamer{conference}{\def\beamer@X@conference{#1}}    
\ProcessOptionsBeamer

initially to define the option, while for the footline:

\defbeamertemplate*{footline}{X theme}[1]{
\begin{beamercolorbox}[ht=0.15\paperwidth,leftskip=.3cm,rightskip=.3cm,sep=0.1cm]{Location bar}
\usebeamerfont{section in head/foot}%
\insertshortauthor~-~\@date~-~\beamer@X@conference \hfill 
\insertframenumber{}/\inserttotalframenumber{}
\end{beamercolorbox}%
}

Now your presentation.tex will call:

\usetheme[conference=Name]{X}

[Tex/LaTex] How to create the own title frame

Here is a possible implementation: it can actually work with every standard theme, but if the theme you developed puts the title in a box you may wonder to get a different effect.

\documentclass{beamer}

\setbeamerfont{supertitle}{size=\LARGE,parent=structure}    

\makeatletter
\def\supertitle#1{\gdef\@supertitle{#1}}%
\setbeamertemplate{title page}
{
  \vbox{}
  \vfill
  \begin{centering}
  \begin{beamercolorbox}[sep=8pt,center]{title}
      \usebeamerfont{supertitle}\@supertitle
   \end{beamercolorbox}
    \begin{beamercolorbox}[sep=8pt,center]{title}
      \usebeamerfont{title}\inserttitle\par%
      \ifx\insertsubtitle\@empty%
      \else%
        \vskip0.25em%
        {\usebeamerfont{subtitle}\usebeamercolor[fg]{subtitle}\insertsubtitle\par}%
      \fi%     
    \end{beamercolorbox}%
    \vskip1em\par
    \begin{beamercolorbox}[sep=8pt,center]{author}
      \usebeamerfont{author}\insertauthor
    \end{beamercolorbox}
    \begin{beamercolorbox}[sep=8pt,center]{institute}
      \usebeamerfont{institute}\insertinstitute
    \end{beamercolorbox}
    \begin{beamercolorbox}[sep=8pt,center]{date}
      \usebeamerfont{date}\insertdate
    \end{beamercolorbox}\vskip0.5em
    {\usebeamercolor[fg]{titlegraphic}\inserttitlegraphic\par}
  \end{centering}
  \vfill
}
\makeatother

\supertitle{supertitle}
\title{the title}
\author{the author}
\institute{My institute}
\date{\today} 

\begin{document}

\begin{frame}
\titlepage
\end{frame}

\begin{frame}{Title of first frame}
text
\end{frame}

\end{document}

This gives:

enter image description here

The problem I said before is due to the fact that I made use of the title color definition for the beamercolorbox containing the supertitle.

By means of \setbeamerfont it is possible to characterize which are the features of the new template supertitle; once given the definition, that should be applied inside the titlepage template immediately before the supertitle insertion to set it with the desired characteristics.

You probably noticed that all elements of the titlepage have this setting. For simplicity, I did not defined a color template for the supertitle, but I re-used the definition given by the title. Indeed, for each template in the titlepage, there is also a color template definition, that could be given with \setbeamercolor. If you want you can define yours by means of:

\setbeamercolor{supertitle}{...}

After that, you should change the previous definition into:

\begin{beamercolorbox}[sep=8pt,center]{supertitle}
  \usebeamerfont{supertitle}\@supertitle
\end{beamercolorbox}

For what concern the \inserttitlegraphic, it is the command that allows to insert (as the name suggests) the logo just in the titlepage. In your presentation you should use the command:

\titlegraphic{...}

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Beamer option definition

[Tex/LaTex] How to create the own title frame

Related Question