Notre Dame Beamer Template

A Beamer template with a University of Notre Dame theme. For math typesetting, it is definitely better than using existing PowerPoint templates.

Forked and modernized by the Dowling Lab, September 2026: every visual element (title bar, section-name bar, title text, canvas, body text, corner logo, title-bar monogram, title-page mark) is its own independent color/visibility choice instead of a fixed palette; there are two title-page layouts; real, current official Notre Dame marks replace the old bundled logos; and a few commands (\ndcornerlogo, \ndlogonote, \hl, \ndvenue) are available for content beyond the stock Beamer fields.

Installation

Copy the .sty files and the logos/ directory into the same directory as your .tex source (or put them somewhere your TEXINPUTS can find them).

\documentclass{beamer}
\usetheme{NotreDame}
\begin{document}
%% Title slide -- this exact wrapping is required, see note below
{
\setbeamertemplate{navigation symbols}{}
\setbeamertemplate{background}{\ndtitlepagelogodraw}
\begin{frame}[plain]
  \titlepage
\end{frame}
}
%% Other slides
\end{document}

The title slide needs that exact wrapping — \setbeamertemplate{background}{\ndtitlepagelogodraw} set outside \begin{frame}, in its own group, right beside the navigation-symbols line. Beamer locks in which background template a frame uses at \begin{frame} time, before the frame's own content (including \titlepage) runs, so setting the background from inside \titlepage itself is too late. \ndtitlepagelogodraw is always defined — including when titlepagelogo=none, or when titlelayout=leftrule (which draws its own logo as content instead) — so this line is always safe to include verbatim regardless of your other options.

See main.tex / document.tex for a fuller working example — build with pdflatex main.tex (twice; see the demo section below) to see several of the options rendered.

Options

Every option is key=value; combine them freely in one \usetheme[...]{NotreDame} call:

\usetheme[background=blue, titlebar=gold, cornerlogo=white, mark=secondary]{NotreDame}

Structural (unchanged from upstream)

Option	Effect
nav	Shows Beamer's navigation-symbol row, bottom-right (off by default)
noslidenumbers	Hides the page-number footer (shown by default)
fullFooter	Swaps the simple page-number footer for a 3-part title/author/date bar (can't combine with noslidenumbers)

The independent style options

Each of these is its own choice with its own sensible default — not a single overall "light/dark mode" the rest cascade from, though several defaults do still consult background, the one choice everything else most naturally reads against.

Option	Values	Default
background	white, blue	white
titlebar	blue, gold, none	contrasts with background (blue bar on white, gold bar on blue)
sectionbar	blue, gold, none	none
titlecolor	blue, gold, black, white	derived from titlebar (white on blue bar, black on gold bar), or from background if titlebar=none
textcolor	black, blue, gold, white	derived from background (blue text on white, white text on blue)
cornerlogo	blue, gold, black, white, fullcolor, none	none
monogram	blue, gold, gold-metallic, white, none	contrasts with titlebar (white on blue bar, blue on gold bar); forced to none if titlebar=none
titlepagelogo	blue, gold, black, white, fullcolor, none	derived from background (blue on white, gold on blue)
mark	primary, secondary	primary
titlelayout	classic, leftrule	classic
highlight	gold, green, blue, none	gold

There is no black-canvas option. background is white or blue (NDBlue) only — that was a deliberate call, not an oversight.

There is no bad-combination guard. Every value is independently settable, including ones that read poorly (background=blue, textcolor=blue is legal and will look wrong). This theme trusts you to pick sensibly; it doesn't second-guess you.

titlebar, sectionbar, titlecolor

• titlebar=none removes the colored title-bar box entirely — the frame title sits directly on the canvas, in whatever titlecolor resolves to, with no logo slot (monogram is forced to none whenever titlebar=none, regardless of what you set it to).
• sectionbar shows the current \section{} name in its own colored bar above the title, when the option isn't none. It only ever shows text when the document actually has \section commands.
• titlecolor is the frametitle's own text color, separate from textcolor (the body).

titlelayout — two title-page templates

• classic (default): Beamer's own centered \title/\author/\institute/\date block, plus the primary academic mark large in the bottom-left corner (\ndtitlepagelogodraw, colored by titlepagelogo).
• leftrule: a left-aligned block — title, gold subtitle, author, institute — over a gold horizontal rule, with the primary mark and \insertdate/\ndvenue sharing one footer row (logo left, date/venue right, both vertically centered against each other).

\usetheme[titlelayout=leftrule]{NotreDame}
\title{Claude for Research}
\subtitle{Beyond the Chatbot}
\author{Prof. Alexander (Alex) Dowling}
\institute{Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering \\ adowling@nd.edu}
\date{17 September 2026}
\ndvenue{Carey Auditorium, Hesburgh Library}

leftrule reuses the stock \title/\subtitle/\author/\institute/\date fields as-is — a department and an email, for instance, are just two lines of \institute{} separated by \\. The mark's size and color follow the same titlepagelogo option as classic (always the primary mark, per the guideline in the next section); its size in the footer row is controlled separately by \ndleftrulelogoheight (default 1.4cm, only defined when titlelayout=leftrule).

leftrule's title-page title is always background-aware (blue on white, white on blue) and is not controlled by titlecolor — that option is specifically the per-slide frametitle bar's text color, which exists on every content frame regardless of which title layout you use, and needs its own bar-aware default independent of the title page.

\ndvenue{text} — a venue/location field

\ndvenue{Carey Auditorium, Hesburgh Library}

Stores a venue string the same way \title/\author/\date store theirs. titlelayout=leftrule shows it under the date on the title page; it's defined unconditionally, so any deck can also reference it in its own header or footer. Leave it unset and the date simply prints alone.

mark, cornerlogo, monogram, titlepagelogo — which logo goes where

There are three logo placements, each independently colorable, and one shape choice (mark) that applies to only one of them:

1. Title page (titlepagelogo) — always the primary (wide) academic mark, regardless of mark. Per Notre Dame's own guidelines: the secondary mark and the monogram are for when space doesn't allow the primary mark, and a title page always has the room.
2. Corner logo (cornerlogo, drawn via \ndcornerlogo) — the one placement where space really can be tight, so mark=primary|secondary applies here: primary is the wide lockup (shield beside "University of Notre Dame"), secondary is the compact vertical lockup (shield above "Notre Dame"), for tighter corners.
3. Title-bar monogram (monogram) — the small "ND" letterform inside the frametitle bar (only relevant when titlebar != none). This is the tightest placement of the three, which is why it's the one spot using the monogram asset instead of the full academic mark.

cornerlogo and titlepagelogo support fullcolor (the real two-tone gold-shield/blue-wordmark treatment); monogram doesn't have a fullcolor variant (the mark is a solid letterform, not a two-part lockup) but does have gold-metallic as a second gold option.

The title page's mark sits in the bottom-left corner (classic) or the bottom-left of the footer row (leftrule) — not centered under the author/date block, which is Beamer's own default \titlegraphic placement. \ndtitlepagelogomargin (default 0.15mm) and \ndtitlepagelogoheight (default 2.6cm, classic only) control its distance from the page corner and its size — override with \renewcommand{...}{...} before \begin{document}, same as the corner logo's own analogous lengths below.

\hl[color]{text} — bold, colored emphasis

\hl{a phrase}            % bold, deck-wide default color (the `highlight` option)
\hl[gold]{a phrase}      % bold, gold, regardless of the deck default
\hl[blue]{a phrase}      % bold, NDBlue
\hl[green]{a phrase}     % bold, Irish Green
\hl[none]{a phrase}      % bold only, no color, regardless of the deck default

Matches a real habit: bold a few words in a sentence for emphasis, not the whole sentence.

\ndcornerlogo and \ndlogonote[align]{text}

Only defined when cornerlogo is not none (they position themselves relative to that logo's actual measured size, so there's nothing to measure against otherwise).

• \ndcornerlogo draws the corner logo. Set automatically as the frame background whenever cornerlogo != none; call it yourself (e.g. \setbeamertemplate{background}{\ndcornerlogo}) if a specific deck wants more control.
• \ndlogonote[align]{text} places a note in the white space beside the corner logo: horizontally centered between the logo's right edge and the slide's right edge, vertically centered on \ndlogonoteanchor (a fraction of \ndcornerlogoheight from the bottom; default 0.5, the logo's own geometric vertical middle). [align] defaults to center (a short takeaway line); pass [left] for a left-aligned reference list.
• \ndcornerlogomargin (default 0.15mm), \ndcornerlogoheight (default 0.975cm), and \ndlogonoteanchor (default 0.5) control the logo's distance from the page corner, its size, and the note's vertical anchor — override with \renewcommand{...}{...} before \begin{document}. \ndlogonoteanchor exists because the geometric center of the full logo (shield + wordmark) isn't necessarily where a note visually reads as "centered against the wordmark" — for the primary mark, measured directly against the asset, "NOTRE DAME"'s own line sits at 0.518, not 0.5 (the shield's wave-tail extends a bit further down than the text). The default stays mark-agnostic; a deck using the primary mark can override it precisely.
• Practical limit: about two lines. \ndlogonote centers its note on its anchor, so the note's height grows equally above and below that point — and at the default \ndcornerlogomargin/\ndcornerlogoheight, there's only a few millimeters of clearance below the anchor before the page edge. A third line reliably clips off the bottom of the slide (confirmed by rendering, not just estimated). Check any multi-line note against its actual render.
• To fit more on one specific slide, raise that slide's anchor locally rather than changing the default for the whole deck — \ndcornerlogomargin is read fresh every time \ndcornerlogo/\ndlogonote draw, so a \renewcommand placed inside a frame environment (Beamer groups each frame, so this reverts automatically at \end{frame} — confirmed by rendering three consecutive frames, not just assumed) affects only that frame, moving the logo and the note together, still aligned:

  \begin{frame}[fragile]{A slide with a longer note}
  \renewcommand{\ndcornerlogomargin}{4mm} % more room below the anchor, this slide only
  \ndlogonote{A longer note.\\Two lines here.\\Even a third line, now that there's room.}
  \end{frame}

  The tradeoff is visual: the logo sits slightly higher on that one slide than everywhere else in the deck.

Known limitation, not automatically resolved: \ndcornerlogo/\ndlogonote assume nothing else occupies the bottom strip of the slide. Both nav (the navigation-symbol row) and fullFooter (the 3-part footer bar) visibly collide with them — none of these three features know about each other. Don't combine cornerlogo with nav or fullFooter without checking the render.

Compilation note: both use TikZ's remember picture, overlay to reference the page edges, which needs a second compilation pass to position correctly — a single pdflatex run will show them misplaced at (0,0); latexmk (or any build that reruns until stable) handles this automatically.

The demo (main.tex / document.tex)

document.tex is a short, working demo of this theme's own options and commands (colors/background, \hl, the corner logo and note box, the logo placements) — not a generic "how Beamer works" tutorial. A single build can only show the one \usetheme[...] combination it was actually compiled with; titlebar=none and titlelayout=leftrule, for instance, are real options but need their own separate build to see live.

Compiled demo output (.pdf, .ps, and other build artifacts) is intentionally not committed to this repository — .gitignore excludes it. Build the demo yourself:

pdflatex main.tex
pdflatex main.tex   # twice, for \ndlogonote's overlay coordinates -- see above

Testing

./test/run_regression.sh compiles a matrix of option combinations and reports which fail — see TESTING.md for what it checks (and, importantly, what it doesn't).

Other suggested packages

• tikz — already loaded by this theme (used for the corner logo/note box)
• listings — for source code listings
• fontspec — if using XeLaTeX

Credits

Author: Daniel Howard (dhoward3@nd.edu) Modified Release: February 2017

Adapted from author below: Author: Tristan Ravitch (travitch@cs.wisc.edu) Initial Release: June 2009 Public Domain

Forked and modernized by the Dowling Lab, September 2026.

Appendix: the \Highlight snippet

Unrelated to \hl above — a pre-existing convenience for source-code listings (HighlightBackground is defined in beamerthemeNotreDame.sty):

\newcommand*{\alphabet}{ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz}
\newlength{\highlightheight}
\newlength{\highlightdepth}
\newlength{\highlightmargin}
\setlength{\highlightmargin}{2pt}
\settoheight{\highlightheight}{\alphabet}
\settodepth{\highlightdepth}{\alphabet}
\addtolength{\highlightheight}{\highlightmargin}
\addtolength{\highlightdepth}{\highlightmargin}
\addtolength{\highlightheight}{\highlightdepth}
\newcommand*{\Highlight}{\rlap{\textcolor{HighlightBackground}{\rule[-\highlightdepth]{\linewidth}{\highlightheight}}}}

This lets you highlight a line in a code listing:

\lstinputlisting[language=C,moredelim={**[il][\Highlight]{@}}]{file.c}

The moredelim option, with the declarations above, highlights any line in file.c prefixed with @.