Caltech beamer theme

A LaTeX beamer theme using Caltech logo and color

This template has been included in the Overleaf template repository (link) and Sharelatex template repository (link). Source codes in this repository and on Overleaf/Sharelatex are identical.

How to use this theme

The syntax is very easy; simply insert the following command in the LaTeX preamble:

\usetheme[<option>]{Caltech}

where <option> should be substituted with one of these three options: minimal, sidebarleft, or sidebarright. It is not recommended to leave the <option> blank, because the slides would have no Caltech logo.

An example .tex template has been included (caltech_beamer_template.tex), which can produce the three example PDF documents in this repository.

What does this theme look like

1. The minimal style

This style has the Caltech logo on the bottom-right corner, and slide titles in Caltech orange. This style is named "minimal" because there are minimal decorations on it. This style looks good in both 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios.

2. The sidebarleft ("side bar left") style

This style has a side bar on the left, which shows the structure of the presentation (e.g., abbreviated title, table of contents, etc.). The Caltech logo is on the top-left corner. The use of 16:9 aspect ratio is recommended, since the side bar takes up some horizontal space, and also most of the projectors these days support 16:9 ratio.

The method to set the aspect ratio to 16:9 is the following:

\documentclass[aspectratio=169]{beamer}

3. The sidebarright ("side bar right") style

This style is exactly the same as sidebarleft, except that the side bar is on the right.

How to customize the styles

1. Aspect ratio: the first line in the .tex template, substitute aspectratio=169 with aspectratio=43 can change the aspect ratio from 16:9 into 4:3.
2. Colors: It is not recommended to change the colors of this theme, because these colors come from Caltech's identity standards (http://identity.caltech.edu/). However, if you still insist, you can edit the file beamercolorthemeCaltechBeaver.sty
3. Other theme elements: If you wish to change some theme elements (e.g., width of the side bar), study the file beamerthemeCaltech.sty and make careful changes as you wish.

Acknoledgements

I got my inspiration from an older Caltech beamer theme: https://github.com/hmaarrfk/caltech-beamer. However, this theme is already outdated: the Caltech seal image is now discouraged for non-formal usage such as presentation slides (http://identity.caltech.edu/standards/visual/seal).