Serula

A very lovely and exceptionally legible serif Beamer theme for mathematical talks, classes, and slide shows. (Typesetting mathematics in $\LaTeX$ has never been so forgiving.)

It uses Crimson Pro Regular for body text and STIX Two Math for equations.

Screenshots

Make it yours

Open main.tex.

1. Change the title, subtitle, name, and affiliation at the top. The optional argument in \title[Short title]{Full title} sets the banner text on content slides. Leave \date{} empty to omit the date.
2. Edit the slides in order. The examples cover lists, equations, tables, figures, animation, and references.
3. Duplicate a content frame to add a slide. Numbering updates automatically; the intro stays unnumbered, with no title in its banner.

Keep beamerthemeSerula.sty beside main.tex. You only need to edit it if you want to change the appearance.

The example drawing and animation share figures/moving-dot.tex. If you remove the visuals demo, remove its \input line from main.tex too.

The final slide uses thebibliography with placeholder book and article entries. Replace them with your sources; use \cite{sample-book} or your own entry key to cite an entry in a slide. No separate .bib file or BibTeX run is required.

Compile

Choose XeLaTeX, not pdfLaTeX, in your editor. From a terminal:

latexmk -xelatex main.tex

The theme loads Beamer's Madrid theme, fontspec, unicode-math, mathtools, microtype, booktabs, graphicx, TikZ, and animate. These packages must be available in your TeX installation.

The fonts are not bundled. XeLaTeX must be able to find these files:

• CrimsonPro-Regular.ttf
• CrimsonPro-Italic.ttf
• CrimsonPro-Bold.ttf
• CrimsonPro-BoldItalic.ttf
• STIXTwoMath-Regular.otf

If a font is reported missing, check that the corresponding file is visible to your TeX installation. The font declarations are near the top of beamerthemeSerula.sty.

To remove intermediate build files while keeping the PDF:

latexmk -c main.tex

Present

Test animations in the PDF viewer you will use for your talk. Some viewers and editor previews show only the first frame.

Template files

Keep these files together when sharing the template:

• main.tex — the example presentation.
• beamerthemeSerula.sty — the theme and helper commands.
• figures/moving-dot.tex — the drawing used in the figures demo.
• README.md — setup and usage instructions.

You can include main.pdf as a preview. Intermediate build files are not needed.