Center text vertical in columns | Beamer

Question

I'm trying to create a latex beamer presentation. I tried using the columns environment in my Frame to split it into 2 Parts: one text part, and another for an illustration. Here is how it looks:

As you can see, the text is not vertically centered. How can I center the text vertically?

Here is my code:

\documentclass{beamer}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[ngerman]{babel}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{lmodern}
\mode <presentation>{
    \usetheme{Ilmenau}
    \setbeamercovered{transparent}}
\begin{document}
\begin{frame}
        \frametitle{Title}
        \begin{columns}[T]
            \begin{column}{0.5\textwidth}
                \centering
                \includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{image}
            \end{column}
            \begin{column}{0.5\textwidth}
                \begin{itemize}
                    \item Bullet Point
                    \item Blitz Point
                    \item Rapid Point
                    \item Speed Point
            \end{itemize}
        \end{column}
    \end{columns}


\end{frame}



\end{document}

I tried using vspace the following way, like you do it to center text in minipages, but that didn't work.

\vspace*{\fill}
        \begin{itemize}
\item bullet point
\item bullet point
\item bullet point
        \end{itemize}
\vspace*{\fill}

Does anybody know how to center text vertically in the columns environment in latex beamer? It would be ideally if it were a preamble setting/package.

Image: image

Answer 1

By using the T option for your columns, you force them to be top aligned. You could replace it with c for centred columns or leave it out altogether because c is the default.

With normal text/images this would perfectly centre the content. For the special case of using a list as the first thing in the column, it will be very slightly off centre, but you could compensate for that e.g. by putting your image in a centre environment instead of using \centering.

\documentclass{beamer}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[ngerman]{babel}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{lmodern}
\mode <presentation>{
    \usetheme{Ilmenau}
    \setbeamercovered{transparent}}
\begin{document}
\begin{frame}
        \frametitle{Title}
        \begin{columns}[c]
            \begin{column}{0.5\textwidth}
                \begin{center}
                \includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{example-image-duck}
                \end{center}
            \end{column}
            \begin{column}{0.5\textwidth}
                \begin{itemize}
                    \item Bullet Point
                    \item Blitz Point
                    \item Rapid Point
                    \item Speed Point
                \end{itemize}
            \end{column}
        \end{columns}
    \end{frame}
\end{document}