How to create beautiful title slide in Beamer?

Creating a non-standard title slide in Beamer can be simplified in the following steps:

1. Create an empty slide.
2. Add background graphics.
3. Create a box for the title and subtitle of the presentation.
4. Add title slide details (Authors, affiliation and a date if necessary ).
5. Add logo to the title slide.

These steps will be discussed in details below to get the following title slide and it is up to your imagination to create your own stylish and modern title slide.

let’s get into the details!

1. Create an empty slide in Beamer

Check this minimal working example:

% Blank slide
\documentclass[aspectratio=169]{beamer}

% Remove navigation bar
\setbeamertemplate{navigation symbols}{}

\begin{document}

% Title slide frame
\begin{frame}[plain]
    % Title slide code
\end{frame}

\end{document}

Congratulations 🎉, we finished the first step!

2. Add background graphics in Beamer

For this model of title slides, we have the following background image that we would like to add it to the previous blank slide (download : Title Slide 1.png):

If you have used Beamer (or LaTeX in general), you know how to add an image to a slide (or a document). The same here, we need to insert an image to the blank slide with a width equal to the slide width. The latter value can be obtained by \paperwidth.

Here is a piece of code that include inserts image in Beamer:

% Title slide frame
\begin{frame}[plain]
    \includegraphics[width=\paperwidth]{Title slide 1.png}
\end{frame}

and here how our title slide looks like!

We would like to put left bottom corner of the image on the left bottom of the slide. Fortunately, we can place images precisely using absolute positioning via TikZ package.

Check the following code:

% Add background image
\documentclass[aspectratio=169]{beamer}

% Remove navigation bar
\setbeamertemplate{navigation symbols}{}

% Tikz package
\usepackage{tikz}

\begin{document}

% Title slide frame
\begin{frame}[plain]

% Background image
\begin{tikzpicture}[remember picture,overlay]
    \node[above right,inner sep=0pt] at (current page.south west)
    {
        \includegraphics[width=\paperwidth]{Title slide 1.png}
    };
\end{tikzpicture}
    
\end{frame}

\end{document}

Comments:

• Firstly, we loaded the TikZ package via the command: \usepackage{tikz}.
• Then, we created a TikZ environment with the options remember picture and overlay. These allows to work on the background layer.
• We created a node at the bottom left corner of the slide, which has the coordinates (current page.south west).
• The node content corresponds to the image insertion with a width equal to the width of the slide in question.
• The node content is positioned relative to the bottom left corner by using above left option.
• We added inner sep=0pt to put the bottom left corner of the image on the bottom left corner of the slide.

The above code yields:

Congratulations 🎉, we finished the second step!

3. Create a box for the title and subtitle of the presentation

With the same manner as above, we can create a box for the title and subtitle of the presentation using node command, which has the following general syntax:

\node[options] (name) at (coordinates){content}; 

In this step, the node has text as content. The node should be positioned slightly above the center of the slide, which corresponds to (current page.center). The text area is filled with a brown color which will be achieved by providing options to the node command. We put all these details inside the tikzpicture environment.

Check the following code:

% Title & Subtitle
\node
[
    above=0.5cm,
    align=center,
    fill=brown!20,
    rounded corners,
    inner xsep=15pt,
    inner ysep=10pt, 
    minimum width=0.7\textwidth,
    text width=0.6\textwidth
] (title) at (current page.center)
{
    \LARGE Best customized Beamer Themes  \\[5pt]
    \small Beautiful title slides: Model 1
};

Adding this piece of code to the above code inside TikZ environment, we get the the following output:

Code comments:

• above=0.5cm: the node content will be placed above the (current page.center) with 0.5cm distance.
• align=center: the content of the node (text) will be centered.
• fill=brown!20: the place reserved by the node content will be filled with light brown.
• rounded corners: by default the node has a rectangle shape and adding this option will change corners to a rounded style.
• inner xsep=15pt: the minimum distance between node content (text) and its border along the x-axis, like a padding.
• inner ysep=10pt: the minimum distance between node content (text) and its border along the y-axis.
• minimum width=0.7\textwidth: minimum width of the box.
• text width=0.6\textwidth: minimum width of the text inside the box.

The node is saved with the name (title), and the content of the node has two parts of content: one written with large font which represents the tile and one with a small font which corresponds to the subtitle. We added \\[5pt] for multiline text with 5pt vertical distance.

Saving nodes will help us to access the coordinates of the node border, which will allows us to position other nodes with respect to this one!

Congratulations 🎉, we finished the third step, Just one more step and we are done!

4. Add Authors, presentation date and a logo

At this level, you have an idea about adding text and images in Beamer using TikZ. Here is the corresponding code of this step:

% Author 
\node[below=0.5cm] (author) at (title.south){LaTeX-beamer.com};

% Date
\node[below=0.5cm] (date) at (author.south){\large \today};

% Logo
\node
[
    below right =0.25cm and 0.5cm
] at (current page.north west)
{
    \includegraphics[width=3.5cm]{Beamer-Logo.png}
};

which yields to Model 1 of our title slide:

Comments:

• Author of the presentation is positioned 0.5cm far from the south coordinates of the title box. The node is saved with the name (author) which will be used to position the date of the presentation or affiliation if necessary.
• Date of the presentation is positioned 0.5cm far from the south coordinates of the author node.
• Logo is added with the same manner as the background graphics. It is positioned 0.25 cm along the y-axis and 0.5cm along the x-axis far from the above left corner of the slide. This requires adding positioning TikZ library at the document preamble \usetikzlibrary{positioning}.

Beautiful beamer title slide code:

% beautiful title slide in Beamer
\documentclass[aspectratio=169]{beamer}

% Remove navigation bar
\setbeamertemplate{navigation symbols}{}

% Tikz package
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{positioning}

\begin{document}

% Title slide frame
\begin{frame}[plain]

\begin{tikzpicture}[remember picture,overlay]

% Background image
    \node[above right,inner sep=0pt] at (current page.south west)
    {
        \includegraphics[width=\paperwidth]{Title slide 1.png}
    };
    
% Title & Subtitle
\node
[
    above=0.5cm,
    align=center,
    fill=brown!20,
    rounded corners,
    inner xsep=15pt,
    inner ysep=10pt, 
    minimum width=0.7\textwidth,
    text width=0.6\textwidth
] (title) at (current page.center)
{
    \LARGE Best customized Beamer Themes  \\[5pt]
    \small Beautiful title slides: Model 1
};

% Author 
\node[ below=0.5cm] (author) at (title.south){LaTeX-beamer.com};

% Date
\node[below=0.5cm] (date) at (author.south){\large \today};

% Logo
\node
[
    below right =0.25cm and 0.5cm
] at (current page.north west)
{
    \includegraphics[width=3.5cm]{Beamer-Logo.png}
};

\end{tikzpicture}
    
\end{frame}

\end{document}