Beautiful Ph.D thesis themes

Question

Do you know beautiful customizable Ph.D class files or "themes"?

I am really eager to find a nice "base" eye-candy Ph.D class that I could customize myself. I began my Ph.D BUT I don't want to waste too much time later so I want to choose now the structure and format/tex file type to some degree, so I am searching something like this:

1) Flexibility and some degree of customization.

2) Beauty.

3) Manual with the class type.

4) Maintenance. I don't want thesis .tex that are not supported. I found some issues in some older files with the TEX upgrade, so, I would prefer some .tex that don't use too specific "weird" packages. I need something "in the bottom" to add later the mathematical packages (maybe some typographic and/or language packages as well) in the top.

I was browsing the web but I could not find something that fit me. Suggestions?

Search for a template: LaTeX Templates by ShareLaTeX, LATEX: Beautiful Typesetting, LaTeX Templates. — osjerick, Nov 30 '13 at 00:05
Have you seen Classic Thesis and clean thesis you may include the list of the ones you already assessed in your answer so we know what you are looking for... — Bordaigorl, Nov 30 '13 at 00:05
all your specs add up to reading memoir or KOMA manuals and coming up with a custom thesis template. — percusse, Nov 30 '13 at 00:24
Using LaTeX to Write a PhD Thesis by Nicola Talbot demoed with scrreprt class part of koma-script is an excellent start point for Master or Ph.D Thesis writing. Off-topic: Beauty is already in the TeX Beast, so don't worry too much on it, focus on real Content to be able to defend your Ph.D work and more importantly adhere to your research school/University thesis guidelines not to get surprised by administrative hurdles at last min. — texenthusiast, Nov 30 '13 at 00:43
If you are trying to avoid wasting time later by sorting this out once and for all, forget beauty. You need to get the rules for formatting your thesis from your institution. If you are lucky, something like the maths department may have a style file. If you are less lucky, you will need to find something as close as you can and work from there. At least in the case of institutions I'm familiar with, your thesis simply won't be accepted if it does not conform to the rules. EDIT: Beaten to it! — cfr, Nov 30 '13 at 00:44
You can find some PhD examples between the answers to Showcase of beautiful typography done in TeX & friends. — Ignasi, Nov 30 '13 at 08:47
I highly recommend this template: http://www-h.eng.cam.ac.uk/help/tpl/textprocessing/ThesisStyle/ I have used it before. It's easy to organize your chapters as different files. And modifying the included class file is easy as well. Also, everything is already formatted for you. — FeX, Nov 30 '13 at 19:39
@texenthusiast Even though this question is kind of opinion based, wanna make your comment into an answer? memoir deserves a metioning as well, maybe even the showcase. The rest of the links shown here are just rubbish. Don't forget to ping me, so i can upvote. — Johannes_B, Feb 17 '15 at 14:52

score 14 · Answer 1 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:35

Summing the Upvoted Comments :

First of all, check ctan site for your university templates incase it is already available, otherwise you may build your own template from memoir or koma-script which are very versatile classes that has features required for a thesis. Have a look at What are the strengths and weaknesses of KOMA-Script and memoir?
An excellent start point for Master or Ph.D Thesis writing is going through Nicola Talbot's Book on Using LaTeX to Write a PhD Thesis that illustrates building thesis template with scrreprt class, part of koma-script.
Also make sure you adhere to your research school/University thesis guidelines not to get surprised by administrative hurdles at last min.
Incase you wish to develop your own thesis class have a look at How to write a LaTeX class file for my thesis

Beautiful Ph.D thesis themes

1 Answers1