Computer Laboratory house style

As a department of the University, we generally aim to follow the University House Style, but modify it occasionally slightly for practical reasons. Please use the house style only for official business related to your work at the University. For example, you may want to avoid using the University’s “corporate identity” on personal web pages that are not primarily about your work, or in correspondence with your private consulting clients.

The brand templates are available for Microsoft Word.

University logo

The current (2015) versions of the University logo are available here as EPS and PDF files. Markus Kuhn prepared the versions below from Adobe Illustrator EPS versions provided by the Communications Office, optimized for file size and ease of use under Unix:

• Colour for bright background: PDF, EPS, SVG, PNG
  
• Colour for dark background: PDF, EPS, SVG, PNG
  
• Black for bright background: PDF, EPS, SVG, PNG
  
• White for dark background: PDF, EPS, SVG, PNG
  

Filer paths: /anfs/www/html/local/typography/logo-ucam = \\filer\www\html\local\typography\logo-ucam
Note also the Guidelines for using the University logo (recomended sizes, spacing, position).

Note: There is also an older embedded PostScript version of just the University shield, with a much smaller file size (7 kB), which was programmed in July 1986 by Philip Hazel at the Computing Service. This one is still very popular for use on PhD title pages. It is available on Lab Linux machines in different forms under /anfs/repl/texmf.local/tex/generic/CUarms/. Richard Clayton has modified Philip Hazel’s EPS shield, to look more like the official one. Ask him if you are interested in a copy.

Business cards

A proper, official style file for printing departmental business cards is still under preparation. Until then, feel free to adapt Markus Kuhn’s template (snapshot). This requires the University Identifier file CUni4.eps in your TEXINPUTS path.

Letter heads

• Microsoft Word: template file used by several admin staff (originally by Neil Dodgson)
• LaTeX: a proper, official style file for a departmental letter head is still under preparation. Until then, there are
  • Markus Kuhn’s class file and example letter (snapshot)
  • Simon Moore’s letter, fax and memo class files

Web pages

The department’s main web pages have generally been following the evolving recommendations of the University web page style.

Tools for formatting web pages according to house styles:

• Ucampas (University of Cambridge Page Augmentation System), is a sophisticated tool available for formatting static-file web pages according to a house style. Pagemaster use it to maintain the filer-hosted main web pages. It is also used by several research groups for their group pages. It currently supports three generations of house style called ucam2012 (also known as Project Light), ucam2008 and ucam2006. The style=ucam2012(colours=blue) colour-variant setting has been used since 2020 for main departmental web pages, but the older style=ucam2008(colours=blue) also still remains in use by some research groups and some parts of the main site.

• Jekyll is a web page and blog formatting tool that reads source files in Markdown or HTML format. David Chisnall once wrote a Jekyll Computer Laboratory template that resembles the ucam2008(blue) house style.

Thesis layout

• For PhD theses, see the PhD thesis formatting page

Masters project reports

• For Masters projects, see the LaTeX template package acs-dissertation.tgz (PDF, source files)
• NEW: LaTeX template package for Masters project reports (ZIP package)
  (final PDF example, blind-marking submission PDF example, source files)

First-year report

Keep it simple and focus on the content, e.g. in LaTeX just

\documentclass[12pt,a4paper,twoside]{article}
\usepackage[margin=25mm]{geometry}
\begin{document}
\title{First-year report}
\author{John Doe}
\date{29 June 2016}
\maketitle
...
\end{document}

Presentation slides

Some options:

• the LaTeX beamer class is very popular for preparing PDF slides in LaTeX
• Markus Kuhn's simple slide macros and scripts

Posters in corridors

Hanging posters

In August 2002, Neil Dodgson and Markus Kuhn proposed the following guidelines for posters hanging on corridor walls in the William Gates Building:

• The posters should preferably be of A1 format (594 x 841 mm), in portrait orientation, and mounted in a “9 mm brushed aluminium frame” available from The Photo Album Company via stores.
• The bottom of the A1 frame should be 1100 mm above the floor.
• The spacing between two frames should be the width of a frame.
• The spacing between the first or last frame in a contiguous row of frames and the next doorframe (outer edge), corner or other obstacle should be equal on both sides and between 1/4 and 5/4 of a frame width (i.e., between 148 and 742 mm).

The frames we used initially could be hung from a single screw underneath the centre top of the frame:

• each screw sits 13 mm below the top of the frame, therefore has to be 1100+841−13 = 1928 mm above the floor;
• a single screw is used to mount the frame, therefore screws are horizontally 1188 mm apart;
• each screw should stick 10–12 mm out of the wall, with a conical head of not more than 6 mm diameter.

You can use our poster screw position calculator to calculate the positions of the screws from the edge of the wall.

Poster style templates

There is no official departmental style for corridor posters, as different people and groups have quite different preferences, especially regarding the textual density. Some research groups have their own recommendations:

• Security Group posters are often formatted with a body font size of 10 pt for A4 paper, with a 10 mm margin on all sides, and then magnified (by a factor of 2^3/2) from A4 to A1 in the printer driver (resulting in a 28 pt body font). They should have the departmental logo in the top right and the date of the poster's production in the bottom right. If available, a URL or paper reference with more details should be included, usually near the bottom. LaTeX template (pdf)

Exam papers

Since 2012, the Computer Laboratory has used Markus Kuhn's “tripos” LaTeX class for typesetting exam questions to produce Computer Science Tripos exam papers and associated solution notes. It replaced an older set of plainTeX macros by Frank King that had been used 1993–2011.