Beamer Template Structure?

Question

Like many, I've been trying to create my institution's Powerpoint presentation template in Beamer. It is going pretty well, but I'm running into the problem that I cannot find how all of Beamer's templates fit together.

The excellent guide at http://www.cpt.univ-mrs.fr/~masson/latex/Beamer-appearance-cheat-sheet.pdf is very helpful in enumerating and grouping them, but a I haven't been able to identify what template determines the background color of a regular frame.

I was able to get the title page to be good (enough), as well as the frametitle and the footline.

The remaining questions I have are:

1. What template do I need to define set background color, font color, and font family of "regular" frames?

2. How could I have figured this out without asking here?

My current definitions are:

color theme:

\mode<presentation>

\definecolor{gold}{RGB}{255, 181, 0}
\definecolor{brown}{RGB}{ 79, 44, 29}

% Settings
\setbeamercolor*{title page header}{fg=brown}
\setbeamercolor*{subtitle}{fg=white}
\setbeamercolor*{author}{fg=white}
\setbeamercolor*{date}{fg=white}
\setbeamercolor*{footline}{fg=gold, bg=brown}
\setbeamercolor*{white}{bg=white}

\mode
<all>

Outer theme:

\mode<presentation>

% Frame title
\defbeamertemplate*{frametitle}{adelphi}[1][]
{
  \begin{beamercolorbox}[wd=\paperwidth]{frametitle}
  \begin{tikzpicture}
  \useasboundingbox[fill=gold](0,0) rectangle(\the\paperwidth,.11\paperheight);

   \ifx\insertframesubtitle\@empty%
      {\node[anchor=west, brown, font=\large] at (0.5,0.5){\insertframetitle};}
   \fi
  \end{tikzpicture}
  \end{beamercolorbox}
}


\defbeamertemplate*{footline}{adelphi}[1][]
{
  \begin{beamercolorbox}[wd=\paperwidth, ht=.02\paperheight,leftskip=.05\paperwidth]{white}%
  \end{beamercolorbox}%
  \begin{beamercolorbox}[wd=\paperwidth, ht=.1\paperheight,leftskip=.05\paperwidth,
    rightskip=.05\paperwidth]{footline}%
  \begin{minipage}[c]{.25\paperwidth}
  \insertauthor
  \end{minipage}
  \hfill
  \insertframenumber
  \hfill
  \includegraphics[height=.08\paperheight]{Adelphi-Wordmark-Gold-RGB.png}\smallskip%
  \end{beamercolorbox}
  \vfill
}

\mode<all>

Inner template

\mode<presentation>

\defbeamertemplate*{background}{adelphi}[1][] {
  \begin{tikzpicture}
  \useasboundingbox (0, 0) rectangle(\paperwidth,\paperheight);
  \fill[color=gold](0, 0) rectangle (\paperwidth, \paperheight);
  \ifnum\thepage>1\relax%
   \fill[white,opacity=1] (0,0) rectangle (\the\paperwidth,\the\paperheight);
  \fi
  \end{tikzpicture}
}



% Title page
\defbeamertemplate*{title page}{adelphi}[1][] {
   \vskip.2\paperheight%
    \begin{beamercolorbox}[wd=\paperwidth,leftskip=.05\paperwidth,sep=8pt,#1]{title page header}
      \usebeamerfont{title}\inserttitle\par%
    \end{beamercolorbox}%
    \begin{beamercolorbox}[wd=\paperwidth,leftskip=.05\paperwidth,sep=8pt,#1]{subtitle}
      \usebeamerfont{subtitle}\insertsubtitle\par%
    \end{beamercolorbox}%
}


\defbeamertemplate*{block body}{adelphi} {
  \begin{tikzpicture}
  \useasboundingbox (0, 0) rectangle(\paperwidth,\paperheight);
  \fill[color=gold](0, 0) rectangle (\paperwidth, \paperheight);
  \end{tikzpicture}

}


\setbeamerfont{default}{family=\sffamily}
\mode
<all>

Thank you,

Kees

Answer 1

• you can change the background colour of all frames with \setbeamercolor{background canvas}{bg=green}. However you won't see the result with your beamer theme, because you draw a rectangle filling the whole page above it with \fill[color=gold](0, 0) rectangle (\paperwidth, \paperheight);

• to change the text colour: \setbeamercolor{normal text}{fg=red}

• normally one would assume that to change the font family of normal text, one could use \setbeamerfont{normal text}{family=\rmfamily}, but a little trick is necessary to make this take affect:

---

\documentclass{beamer}

\setbeamercolor{background canvas}{bg=green}
\setbeamercolor{normal text}{fg=red}
\setbeamerfont{normal text}{family=\rmfamily}

\AtBeginDocument{\usebeamerfont*{normal text}}


\begin{document}

\begin{frame}
    abc
\end{frame} 

\end{document}