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About to do this PhD thesis here - but am not really satisfied with my layout. Could somebody point me to some interesting layouts, templates or whatever?

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16  
Check the regulations before going too wild/creative. Some universities are strict about the formatting. – Dave Clarke Aug 11 '12 at 9:38
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Absolutely follow David Clarke's advice. I had to write my thesis inside a template file that I was given by my institution. – Ben Norris Aug 11 '12 at 12:20
Try the Latex template we've applied in our Research Group. As it is a sourceforge project, you can modify, and suggest further improvements. sourceforge.net/projects/risetemplate – Ivan Machado Oct 31 '12 at 20:49

3 Answers

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Use the one that is provided by your institution. The formatting guidelines are not "guidelines", but are instead "requirements" that are checked by someone who deeply cares about them. So you should use a template that has successfully been used in the past at your institution. If you do otherwise, you are setting yourself up for a lot of formatting work. All of that said, University of Oregon's style file, which I used for my degree there, may be found here: http://www.ctan.org/pkg/uothesis

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I agree with the recommendation that using an existing package/style file is the best way forward because this will save lots of time fiddling with style. However, I don't agree with the sentiment expressed that one should follow the ``house'' style because somebody in the home institution deeply cares for it. Usually the house style is enforced by people who don't care about/haven't got a clue about typography. I'd aslo be surprised if they care to check. I suggest you contact your thesis adviser if you want to use a non-standard style and use it if they're happy. – Marc van Dongen Aug 12 '12 at 17:45
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At least in some institutions margins, double-spacing, font, headers, ... are indeed requirements, and are checked by people who don't know anything about typography, but who will require compliance and send it back... – paul garrett Aug 12 '12 at 22:13
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Incidentally, who is it inside a university that really cares about the thesis format? Obsessive-compulsive librarians? – Federico Poloni Aug 13 '12 at 16:25
@FedericoPoloni +1 for that. – Marc van Dongen Aug 13 '12 at 17:15
I don't know who cares or why, I just know I had to re-TeX and re-print (on the special paper) many pages of my dissertation due to margin and layout issues before I could actually have my dissertation accepted by the graduate school. I have heard rumor that my experience is not unique. I have also heard rumor that the absurd nitpicking is due to microfiche(!?) requirements, but do not know if that rumor is true. – Peter Boothe Aug 18 '12 at 22:39
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up vote 5 down vote

Look at these options, I personally prefer the third option as Latex is always the best.

  1. http://www2.imm.dtu.dk/teaching/phd/

  2. http://www0.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/c.clack/phd.html

  3. http://theoval.cmp.uea.ac.uk/~nlct/latex/thesis/thesis_a4.pdf

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The first and fourth URL are identical. – Marc van Dongen Aug 31 '12 at 19:04
up vote 2 down vote

The following are all LaTeX related.

I really like Uggedal's thesis design. You may download the sources from https://github.com/jrk/uggedal-thesis.

Other starting points are Andre Miede's classicthesis and Lorenzo Pantieri's classicthesis packages.

@Manual{classicthesis,
    author    = {Miede, Andr{\'e}},
    title     = {The Classic Thesis Style},
    keywords  = {latex},
    date      = {2010-01-24},
}

@Manual{arsclassica,
    author    = {Pantieri, Lorenzo},
    title     = {Customizing \texttt{classicthesis}
                  with the \texttt{arsclassica} Package},
    keywords  = {latex},
    date     = {2010},
}
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