Showcase of beautiful typography done in TeX & friends

Question

If you were asked to show examples of beautifully typeset documents in TeX & friends, what would you suggest? Preferably documents available online (I'm aware I could go to a bookstore and find many such documents called 'books'). Extra bonus for documents whose LaTeX source is available.

This is not an idle question. Seeing great examples of any craft is both educational and inspiring, let alone explaining why we prefer TeX to Word or other text editors.

For instance, I like how Philipp Lehman's Font Installation Guide looks. I don't know enough LaTeX to realize how much customization was done, but the ToC looks polished.

Your nominations, please ...

Answer 1

Lately, I've begun working on duplicating a 16th century French Bible with XeTeX:

https://github.com/raphink/geneve_1564

It features image lettrine and OTF features using XeTeX, specifically the advanced features from the open-source EB Garamond font, some of which were implemented specifically for this project (thanks to Georg Duffner's great reactivity).

The project is still a work in progress (the marginpars can be improved) and only features one page so far.

Edit:

After reworking a few details, I ordered a printed copy recently, using zazzle:

Edit on 2015/07/07:

Fixed some details in the first page, and added a second page, featuring the EB Garamond Initials font.

Answer 2

My lecture notes on Flight Dynamics, in Italian.

This is Lecture Note 1.

Answer 3

I use LaTeX to typeset my role playing games (RPGs) projects for some years now. I thought I share them here, as they go beyond the usual scientific background. Most content was created in German, but thanks to the LaTeX sources, partial translations in English, Polish, Spanish and French have been done by others. (Xe)LaTeX is used to apply the same layouts to those languages.

At the core there is a CC BY-SA licensed 4 page booklet called NIP'AJIN containing game rules. There are separate homepages for the German, English, Polish, Spanish and French PDFs, (Xe)LaTeX sources for all of them are available in a single GitHub-Repository. NIP'AJIN makes heavy use of a custom truetype symbol font, for which sources can be found in a second GitHub-Repository. To keep the page count small, it does not make use of illustrations:

Based on that, I have created longer booklets that include those 4 pages and add more content as well as illustrations. Maybe notable are NIP'AJIN Shots Vol.I and Vol.II that keep the same layout. German PDFs are available, most of the content (excluding illustrations) is also in the GitHub repository mentioned above:

Using the same style files of those Shots, I have also created themed booklets. Notable are Kurai Jikan, a manga/anime themed booklet (currently available in English, German and Polish), and Einhundertelf Jahre (German only), a toys-themed booklet:

Due license issues with the illustrations, no sources are available for those two, but the PDFs are distributed for free as CC BY-NC-ND. They are done the same way as the starter kit / author's package, found in the GitHub-Repository in the starter folder: they take the red-white layout from above and override some layout instructions to replace colors, backgrounds and fonts. The starter kit demonstrates this by creating a blue layout.

Finally, I recently created a CC BY-SA leaflet in German, English and Polish to promote the game. Full sources for it are available in this third GitHub-Repository.

Still work-in-progress is ROBiN, a Robin Hood / medieval themed 80-page book (look at the eBook Version - German however).

edited on 2016/01/26 Since this answer is still quite popular, I updated it to reflect the current state of the various projects and updated previews and links.

Answer 4

Bilingual dictionary typeset in LaTex and XeLaTex

I was asked to publish complete code of bilingual dictionary typesetting in LaTex. This regards typesetting of Icelandic-Czech Students' Dictionary.

The code:

The complete code can be found in two versions on GitHub repositories.

1. LaTex version
2. XeLaTex version

---

Examples:

Example picture of current LaTex version layout.

Second example picture : lines in both columns are correctly aligned while displaying two images

---

Preview:

1. the first results of example letters can be viewed here
2. current version example of letter A

I humbly admit that this is community collaborative work that helped us step by step to add useful functions to the code. Thank you !!!

We owe the final shape of typography to Paolo Brasolin, that has made diametrical changes, namely:

1. lines in two columns document are aligned
2. microtype package in use
3. clarity of the code
4. alignment of figures
5. geometry of layout

---

Questions and answers that helped to complete the code:

See How to set a letter to the margin of the page and position it vertically according to alphabetical order? for some explanations about the thumb index.

See How to display unprinted text in headers? for explanations about unprinted headwords in header.

See also question Two different layouts using fancyhdr that exlains how to use different layouts using fancyhdr

See also Texindy sorting Icelandic that solves correct sorting of Icelandic index

Answer 5

If I can be allowed to plug my own project, my page for Bertrand Russell's Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy shows off 6 different PDFs for different page sizes, including eBook versions, produced with the same core source file. The source is available too. However, it was also one of my first LaTeX projects and I’m a bit embarassed by some of the messiness in the code.

A more recent, and cleaner project (source also available) is Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus also available in different versions from the same source.

Answer 6

My first attempt to make something ... beautiful?

Without trying to imitate any particular book or style, I tried to evoke the beauty of ancient publications (very far from the illuminated books of he Middle Ages with Gothic or Uncial fonts, which are difficult to read for modern people).

The idea was add only add some fourier-orns ornaments, color, lettrines and old style numbers (except in math mode) once so popular. The type font is Palatino, that looks old but not strange for people (who mostly will be not aware that is not the usual Times Roman). There are not ligatures nor random small missplacing of old printing presses, but protrusion and expansion of the microtype package help in recreate slight imperfections preventing printing characters always with exactly the same size. Paper is artificially aged with wallpaper package with a simple backgroud.

The two sample pages below (with nonsense dummy text, biologist please ignore the content) have been joined by the inner margins with Gimp, to simulate their appearance in a paper book.

Edit: I planned to post the code when it was more polished and it could be used as book template... But I never have time to do it, so as requested, here it is, as is. In graphicx package have been included the [demo] option and \TileWallPaper has been commented to make it compilable without images.

\documentclass[twoside,12pt,english]{book}
\usepackage{babel}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{color}
\definecolor{marron}{RGB}{60,30,10}
\definecolor{darkblue}{RGB}{0,0,80}
\definecolor{lightblue}{RGB}{80,80,80}
\definecolor{darkgreen}{RGB}{0,80,0}
\definecolor{darkgray}{RGB}{0,80,0}
\definecolor{darkred}{RGB}{80,0,0}
\definecolor{shadecolor}{rgb}{0.97,0.97,0.97}
\usepackage[demo]{graphicx}
\usepackage{wallpaper}
\usepackage{wrapfig,booktabs}

\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\usepackage{lettrine}
\input Acorn.fd
\newcommand*\initfamily{\usefont{U}{Acorn}{xl}{n}}

\usepackage{geometry}
\geometry{
tmargin=5cm, 
bmargin=5cm, 
lmargin=5cm, 
rmargin=3cm,
headheight=1.5cm,
headsep=0.8cm,
footskip=0.5cm}


% \usepackage[full]{textcomp}
\renewcommand{\familydefault}{pplj} 
\usepackage[
final,
stretch=10,
protrusion=true,
tracking=true,
spacing=on,
kerning=on,
expansion=true]{microtype}

\setlength{\parskip}{1.3ex plus 0.2ex minus 0.2ex}


\usepackage{fourier-orns}

\newcommand{\ornamento}{\vspace{2em}\noindent \textcolor{darkgray}{\hrulefill~ \raisebox{-2.5pt}[10pt][10pt]{\leafright \decofourleft \decothreeleft  \aldineright \decotwo \floweroneleft \decoone   \floweroneright \decotwo \aldineleft\decothreeright \decofourright \leafleft} ~  \hrulefill \\ \vspace{2em}}}
\newcommand{\ornpar}{\noindent \textcolor{darkgray}{ \raisebox{-1.9pt}[10pt][10pt]{\leafright} \hrulefill \raisebox{-1.9pt}[10pt][10pt]{\leafright \decofourleft \decothreeleft  \aldineright \decotwo \floweroneleft \decoone}}}
\newcommand{\ornimpar}{\textcolor{darkgray}{\raisebox{-1.9pt}[10pt][10pt]{\decoone \floweroneright \decotwo \aldineleft \decothreeright \decofourright \leafleft} \hrulefill \raisebox{-1.9pt}[10pt][10pt]{\leafleft}}}

\makeatletter
\def\headrule{{\color{darkgray}\raisebox{-2.1pt}[10pt][10pt]{\leafright} \hrulefill \raisebox{-2.1pt}[10pt][10pt]{~~~\decofourleft \decotwo\decofourright~~~} \hrulefill \raisebox{-2.1pt}[10pt][10pt]{ \leafleft}}}
\makeatother

\fancyhf{}

\renewcommand{\chaptermark}[1]{\markboth{#1}{}}
\renewcommand{\sectionmark}[1]{\markright{#1}}

\newcommand{\estcab}[1]{\itshape\textcolor{marron}{\nouppercase #1}}

\fancyhead[LE]{\estcab{Fran Oldstyle}}
\fancyhead[RE]{\estcab{History of taxonomy}}
% \fancyhead[CE,CO]{\estcab{\decoone}}
\fancyhead[LO]{\estcab{\rightmark}} % malo cuando no hay section ~~~ \thesection
\fancyhead[RO]{\estcab{\leftmark}}

% \fancyhead[RO]{\bf\nouppercase{ \leftmark}}
% \fancyfoot[LE]{\bf \thepage ~~ \leafNE}
% \fancyfoot[RO]{ \leafNE  ~~ \bf \thepage}

\fancyfoot[LO]{
\ornimpar \\ \large \hfill \sffamily\bf \textcolor{darkgray}{\leafNE ~~~ \thepage}
}
\fancyfoot[RE]{\ornpar   \\ \large  \sffamily\bf \textcolor{darkgray}{\thepage ~~~ \reflectbox{\leafNE}}  \hfill}

\newenvironment{Section}[1]
{\section{\vspace{0ex}#1}}
{\vspace{12pt}\centering ------- \decofourleft\decofourright ------- \par}



\usepackage{lipsum}
\setlength{\parindent}{1em} % Sangría española
\pagestyle{fancy}

\renewcommand{\footnoterule}{\vspace{-0.5em}\noindent\textcolor{marron}{\decosix \raisebox{2.9pt}{\line(1,0){100}} \lefthand} \vspace{.5em} }
\usepackage[hang,splitrule]{footmisc}
\addtolength{\footskip}{0.5cm}
\setlength{\footnotemargin}{0.3cm}
\setlength{\footnotesep}{0.4cm} 

\usepackage{chngcntr}
\counterwithout{figure}{chapter}
\counterwithout{table}{chapter}


\begin{document}
% \TileWallPaper{300pt}{300pt}{Descargas/fondopapelviejo.jpg}

\chapter{Six kingdoms of life?}
\newpage

\section{Plant\ae}
\lettrine[lines=3]{\initfamily\textcolor{darkgreen}{T}}{he classic} kingdom \emph{Plant\ae} (Haeckel, 1866
include all the multicellular green plants (\emph{Viridiplant\ae} in Latin) as flowering  
plants, conifers, ferns, mosses and green algae. The number of species 
are estimated\footnote{Largely underestimated according to many naturalist.} around 300,000 to 315,000. 
Usually red or brown seaweeds like kelp, fungi and bacteria have
excluded from this group.
This kingdom really exists since Carolus Linn\ae us (1707--1778) who 
divided the natural world into animals, plants and minerals. The kingdom \emph{Animalia}  and \emph{Plant\ae} remained 
in use by modern evolutionary biologists until some years.  

\begin{wrapfigure}{r}{0.26\textwidth}
\centering
\includegraphics[scale=.26]{Descargas/mobot31753002356449_0113.jpg}
\caption{\footnotesize \emph{Vallaris pergularia} from \emph{Icones plantarum}, vol. II., (Hooker, 1837).}
\label{fig1}
\end{wrapfigure}
But now, both kingkoms are considered only two brachs of the unicelular kingdom \emph{Protist} 
or \emph{Protozoa}\footnote{Although by tradition,  inconsistently the status of kingdom 
is maintained \emph{Animalia}  and \emph{Plant\ae}.}.  
\lipsum[2]

\lipsum[3]

\ornamento

\section{Fungi}

\lettrine[lines=3]{\initfamily\textcolor{darkgreen}{L}}{arlegy}, organism like \emph{Candida albicans} has
 been considered different of \emph{Protozoa} and related with green plants. However, today there 
 are evidences that animals and true fungi are indeed closer to each other than to any other group 
 in the eukaryote tree, far from the alveolates and other eukaryotic lineages.  

\begin{wraptable}{r}{7 cm}
\vspace{-.5cm}
\centering
\footnotesize
\caption{\label{wraptab}Estimated fungal species.}
\begin{tabular}{lr}\\\toprule  
Authors & Species \\\midrule
Bisby and Ainsworth (1943) & $10^5$ \\  
Martin (1951) &  $2.5\times10^5$  \\
Hawksworth (1991) & $1.5\times10^6$ \\ 
O’Brien \emph{et al.} (2005) & $>3.5\times10^6$ \\  \bottomrule
\end{tabular}
\end{wraptable} 


\lipsum[4-6]

\end{document}

Answer 7

Here is a page from a simultaneous Romanian/English liturgy used in the Romanian Orthodox church that I typeset. I don't know if it qualifies for beautiful, but I'll let you decide. I used an archaich Romanian font for the headings, parcolumns for the side-by-side text, and LilyPond for the scores.

edit: There's now http://www.liturghie.net/ where the full PDFs are available (also in other languages besides English). Source code will eventually make its way on to GitHub as I clean it up. The whole thing is obviously work in progress.

Answer 8

I may be a little biased, but I'm quite happy with the way my thesis Circuit Quantum Electrodynamics turned out.

EDIT: I have now packaged up the source with a brief description of some of the tricks I used (tweaking your latex is a great way to procrastinate when you should be writing a thesis!)

If you find the sources useful, or further if you use my format as the basis of your own thesis, I would love to hear from you!

Answer 9

A recent edition to the pstricks family is a set of "Vectorian ornaments" used for decorating text. It At the moment (don't know whether it might be expanded) it includes 196 ornaments, listed by number:

The documentation showcases some of the styles around text.

108:

158:

Answer 10

One of the most interesting books typeset with TeX that I know, is "Trees, Maps, and Theorems" by Jean-Luc Doumont. It offers beautiful typography down to details such that each paragraph is typeset as a perfect rectangle (which means a lot of textual rewriting, so whether this is a good idea I leave open). But it makes a wonderful coffee-table book, with a lot of very useful advice inside.

Link to some sample pages as pdf

Answer 11

The coloredlettrine package aims to provide beautiful colored drop caps to LaTeX, using the EB Garamond font:

Answer 12

Here are some pages of my end-of-post-obligatory-school work (Travail de Maturité in French). The whole source code can be found in my Git repository under examples/TM. Some of this document typo are given as separated files in the typographyArchive folder. The document is in French, it's compiled using XeLaTeX. The main font is Lato (it's publish under the SIL open font licence).

The goal was to have a really "modern" design. It is inspired from the flat design that is used for websites.

It took me a lot of time and I hope the result was worth it. I spend some time on the table of content and the chapters headings. Besides, as I wanted something elegant, modern but still uncluttered, special efforts were made on the text look, and the document spacing. The tables are also customized to meet the flat style.

Answer 13

If you have time to spare, you can also have a look at my thesis Stochastic Multiplayer Games: Theory and Algorithms. The font is Fedra Serif B, combined with FdSymbol.

Edit: My LaTeX class file is available at https://gist.github.com/3428745.

Answer 14

For a project I had to typeset a text conversation between two people. I ended up writing a class that recreates the look and feel of the Kik messenger app.

Source of the class file (kik-android.cls):

% kik-android.cls
%   by Brian Jacobs (fixes by Maximilian Noethe).
%   April 10, 2018
%
% This document class emulates the user interface of the Kik messaging
% application running on an android Moto X.

\ProvidesClass{kik-android}

% Start with article. Eventually this should be removed,
% because I'm not actually using it for much of anything
\LoadClass{article}

% Load all necessary packages
\usepackage{varwidth}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{calc}


% Set up the page so that it matches phone size.
\usepackage[top=.55in,         bottom=.55in,
            right=.015in,      left=.015in,
            paperwidth=2.308in,paperheight=4.103in]{geometry}

% Style the page
\pagestyle{empty}
\setmainfont{DroidSans}
\setlength{\parindent}{0pt}

% Color Definitions
\usepackage{xcolor}
\definecolor{backgroundgray}{RGB}{238,238,238}
\definecolor{linegray}{RGB}{212,212,212}
\definecolor{circgray}{RGB}{199,199,199}
\definecolor{circdarkgray}{RGB}{117,117,117}
\definecolor{arrowgray}{RGB}{107,107,107}
\definecolor{msggreen}{RGB}{185,224,97}
\definecolor{androidgray}{RGB}{191,191,191}
\definecolor{repwiregreen}{RGB}{71,146,53}
\definecolor{kikblue}{RGB}{103,142,233}
\definecolor{kiktimepalegray}{RGB}{158,169,184}
\definecolor{kiktimedarkgray}{RGB}{122,133,151}

% Customization Flags
\def\@hours{12}
\def\@minutes{11}
\def\@partnerName{Sample Name}

% Macros to draw the background
\def\@statusbar#1{
  \def\c{androidgray}
  \fill[\c]
    let \p1 = (current page.north east) in
      (\x1 - .42in - #1in, \y1 - 0.0415in - #1in) rectangle (\x1 - .43in -#1in, \y1 - 0.1409 in);
}

% Background Macro
\def\@drawBackground{
  \begin{tikzpicture}[remember picture, overlay]
    % Background
    \fill[backgroundgray] (current page.north east) rectangle (current page.south west);
    \fill[black]
    let \p1 = (current page.north east) in
    let \p2 = (current page.north west) in
    (\x1,\y1) rectangle (\x2,\y2 - 0.1667in);
    \fill[black]
    let \p1 = (current page.south east) in
    let \p2 = (current page.south west) in
    (\x1,\y1) rectangle (\x2,\y2 + 0.3141in);
    \fill[white]
    let \p1 = (current page.north east) in
    let \p2 = (current page.north west) in
    (\x1,\y1 - 0.1667in) rectangle (\x2,\y2 - .5289in);
    \draw[thick,linegray]
    let \p1 = (current page.north east) in
    let \p2 = (current page.north west) in
    (\x1,\y1 - .5289in) -- (\x2,\y2 - .5289in);
    \fill[white]
    let \p1 = (current page.south east) in
    let \p2 = (current page.south west) in
    (\x1,\y1 + 0.3141in) rectangle (\x2,\y2 + .6090in);
    \draw[thick,linegray]
    let \p1 = (current page.south east) in
    let \p2 = (current page.south west) in
    (\x1,\y1 + .6090in) -- (\x2,\y2 + .6090in);

    % Kik Top bar decorations
      % Circles
    \fill[circgray]
      let \p1 = (current page.north east) in
        (\x1 -.1987in,\y1-.359in) circle (0.04065in);
    \fill[circdarkgray]
      let \p1 = (current page.north east) in
        (\x1 -.15805in,\y1-.31835in) circle (0.04065in);

      % Name
    \draw
      let \p1 = (current page.north west) in
        (\x1 + .4647in, \y1 - .3481in) node[anchor=west] {\@partnerName};

      % Arrow
    \draw[thick,circdarkgray]
      let \p1 = (current page.north west) in
        (\x1 + .1314in, \y1 - .3397in) -- (\x1 + .2179in , \y1 - .3397in);
    \draw[thick,circdarkgray]
      let \p1 = (current page.north west) in
        (\x1 + .1795in, \y1 - .2981in) -- (\x1 + .1314in, \y1 - .3397in) --
        (\x1 + .1795in, \y1 - .3846in);

    % Kik Bottom Bar Decorations
      % Type a message...
    \draw
      let \p1 = (current page.south west) in
        (\x1 + .3141in, \y1 + .5524in) node[anchor=north west,scale=.85] {\color{androidgray}Type a message...};

      % Plus
    \draw[thick, androidgray]
      let \p1 = (current page.south west) in
        (\x1 + .1538in, \y1 + .5321in) -- (\x1 + .1538in,\y1 + .4135in);
    \draw[thick, androidgray]
      let \p1 = (current page.south west) in
        (\x1 + .0906in, \y1 + .4728in) -- (\x1 + .2088in, \y1 + .4728in);

    % Android Top Bar Decorations
      % Time
    \draw 
      let \p1 = (current page.north east) in
        (\x1,\y1-0.01in) node[anchor=north east,scale=0.75] {\color{androidgray}\@hours:\@minutes};

      % Republic Wireless
    \draw[very thick,repwiregreen]
      let \p1 = (current page.north west) in
        (\x1 + .0701in, \y1 - .0801in) to[bend left=90] (\x1 + .1603in, \y1 - .0801in);

      % Battery Indicator
    \fill[androidgray]
      let \p1 = (current page.north east) in
        (\x1 - .3974in, \y1 - .1406in) rectangle (\x1 - .3213in,\y1 - .0509in);
    \fill[androidgray]
      let \p1 = (current page.north east) in
        (\x1 - .3784in, \y1 - .0515in) rectangle (\x1 - .3403in,\y1 - .0379in);

      % Status Bars
      \@statusbar{0}
      \@statusbar{.02}
      \@statusbar{.04}
      \@statusbar{.06}
      \@statusbar{.08}

    % Android Bottom Bar Decorations
    % Home
    \draw[very thick,androidgray]
      let \p1 = (current page.south) in
        (\x1 - .1186in, \y1 + .08974in) -- (\x1 + .1186in, \y1 + .08974in) -- 
        (\x1 + .1186in, \y1 + .1795in)  -- (\x1, \y1 + .2115in) -- 
        (\x1 - .1186in, \y1 + .1795in) -- cycle;

    % Pages
    \draw[very thick,androidgray]
      let \p1 = (current page.south east) in
        (\x1 - .4391in, \y1 + .1058in) rectangle (\x1 - .6026in, \y1 + .1795in);
    \draw[very thick,androidgray]
      let \p1 = (current page.south east) in
        (\x1 - .3974in, \y1 + .1346in) -- (\x1 - .3974in, \y1 + .2219in) --
        (\x1 - .5545in, \y1 + .2219in);

    % Back arrow
    \draw[very thick,androidgray]
      let \p1 = (current page.south west) in
        (\x1 + .4199in, \y1 + 0.1635in) -- (\x1 + .5833in, \y1 + 0.1635in) to[bend left=90]
        (\x1 + .5833in, \y1 + .0993in) -- (\x1 + .5032in, \y1 + .0993in);
    \draw[very thick,androidgray]
      let \p1 = (current page.south west) in
        (\x1 + .4487in, \y1 + .1987in) -- (\x1 + .4199in, \y1 + .1635in) -- (\x1 + .4487in, \y1 + .1282in);

  \end{tikzpicture}
}

% Make the background appear on every page
\usepackage{everypage}
\AddEverypageHook{\@drawBackground}


% Commands for use by the user.
\def\setPartnerName#1{
  \def\@partnerName{#1}
}

\def\setPartnerPic#1{
  \def\@partnerPic{#1}
}

\def\setHours#1{
  \def\@hours{#1}
}

\def\setMinutes#1{
  \def\@minutes{#1}
}

\def\me#1{
  \hphantom{.}\hfill\begin{tikzpicture}
    \draw (0,0) node[anchor=north east,rectangle,rounded corners=2,fill=msggreen, scale=0.75,draw=circgray] {
      \hspace{.1in}\begin{varwidth}{1.5in}
        \vphantom{.}
        \raggedright #1\\
        \tiny \color{msggreen}.
      \end{varwidth}
      \hspace{.1in}
    };
    \fill[msggreen] (-0.01in,-0.06in) -- (0.06in,-0.12in) -- (-0.01in,-0.18in) -- cycle;
    \draw[circgray] (0,-0.06in) -- (0.06in,-0.12in) -- (0in,-0.18in);
  \end{tikzpicture}
  \vspace{.05in}\\
}

\def\you#1{
  \begin{tikzpicture}
    \ifdefined\@partnerPic
    \draw (-.6,-.3) node[scale=1.825,circle, path picture={
        \node at (path picture bounding box.center){
          \includegraphics[width=.24in]{\@partnerPic}
        };
      }
    ] {};
    \else\fill[black] (-.6,-.3) circle (.12in);\fi
    \draw (0,0) node[anchor=north west,rectangle,rounded corners=2,fill=white, scale=0.75,draw=linegray] {
      \hspace{.1in}\begin{varwidth}[c]{1.5in}
        \vphantom{.}
        \raggedright #1\\
        \tiny \color{white}.
      \end{varwidth}
      \hspace{.1in}
    };
    \fill[white] (0.01in,-0.06in) -- (-0.06in,-0.12in) -- (0.01in,-0.18in) -- cycle;
    \draw[linegray] (0,-0.06in) -- (-0.06in,-0.12in) -- (0in,-0.18in);
  \end{tikzpicture}
  \vspace{.05in}\\
}

\def\time#1#2{
  \hphantom{.}\hfil\begin{tikzpicture}
    \draw (0,0) node[scale=.65] {\color{kiktimepalegray}#1 \color{kiktimedarkgray}@ #2};
  \end{tikzpicture}\hfil\\
}

Source for the conversation:

\documentclass{kik-android}

\setPartnerName{Dave Johnson}
\setPartnerPic{Man.jpg}
\setHours{12}
\setMinutes{11}

\begin{document}
\you{Knock knock}
\me{Who's there?}
\you{Canoe}
\me{Canoe who?}
\you{Canoe help me with my homework?}
\time{Fri}{12:03 PM}
\you{...please. I'm gonna fail calculus. :-(}
\me{...}
\end{document}

Answer 15

I'd like to add two new "styles of typography" which I created recently. The content is not exactly impressive but perhaps the typography is.

The first example document contains more of a regular "book style", with strong influence from the "tufte"-class, although I used somewhat different body text and captions. Here are the first four pages of the second chapter:

I also tried something more experimental. This more futuristic approach does not contain serifs, shows excessive use of notes in the margin, and it uses drop shadows for most figures. Also, I used a slightly less invasive colour pattern. Whatever, I just wanted to twist some rules. Here are some example pages (the real content has been substituted with sample text due to confidentiality issues):

Answer 16

It's often said that the 19th century represented a nadir in typography, but I find many documents typeset in this period to be charmingly kitschy. I've recently undertaken a project to reproduce "Persecution of New Ideas", a notorious quacksalver's advertisement from an old 1875 railroad atlas. Here is the LaTeX reproduction, warts and all:

And here is the original:

Though there were some tricky bits, on the whole this wasn't terribly difficult to reproduce. The source code (and the generated PDF) is now available on GitHub: https://github.com/logological/blood

Answer 17

Personally, I love the ability to really use typography as part of storytelling, like as shown in the \raisebox example in A (Not So) Short Introduction to LaTeX2e:

\raisebox{0pt}[0pt][0pt]{\Large%
\textbf{Aaaa\raisebox{-0.3ex}{aa}%
\raisebox{-0.7ex}{a}%
\raisebox{-1.2ex}{r}%
\raisebox{-2.2ex}{g}%
\raisebox{-4.5ex}{h}}}
she shouted, but not even the next
one in line noticed that something
terrible had happened to her.

Or to show that pi is rather long... (based on diminuendo from from the Tex showcase):

Isn't that art?

Answer 18

• The TeX Showcase contains many examples.
• The AAUP SHOWBOOKS site shows Humanities books typeset with TeX
• tufte-latex contains two classes and examples dedicated to the Tufte style

Answer 19

I scarcely cannot believe, that Christoph Schiller’s herculean 20 years effort of writing a free physics textbook Motion Mountain is not on this list. Despite his criticism of LaTeX, which itself is interesting to read, the six volumes are produced with LaTeX. Beautifully typeset in MinionPro and Myriad extended by Johannes Küster’s Minion Math.

If I had to choose one project of which I wanted to see the LaTeX source of, it would be this book.

Answer 20

I try to pay attention to typography (and in particular French typography) details in the books I edit. Hopefully, the result is not too bad (I don't pretend to a typographist nor a graphist):

• Calvinisme, Arminianisme & Parole de Dieu (published last year):

• Charismatique ou charismaniaque ? (unpublished yet)

• Sagesse pour Aujourd'hui (unpublished yet)

Lately, I've tried hard to bring acceptable typography to EPUB publishing, using the same LaTeX source (and some TeX4HT tricks). Here are some examples taken on Android with Aldiko:

And in Readium (Chrome extension):

Answer 21

Here's ConTeXt + metapost rendition of Oliver Byrne's "The first six books of the Elements of Euclid"

The idea was not to reproduce the original, but rather to implement its most important features. As a result, there's a metapost library to handle all the byrnian stuff, which can be used to produce similarly styled geometric proofs. I tried to make this lib extensible, and some extras are already there, e. g. there are optional text labels (as Tufte in "Envisioning information" have suggested):

And when I realized that there's no need to have pre-drawn linked graphics, I decided not to redraw lettrines from the original, but to make them generated. And so, they are, and by default there are no two identical initials (but it's easy to substitute generated ones with pictures):

And even though I'm not quite content with how the book looks yet, I think that's one of the things TeX & friends are great for.

UPD:

There's also a Russian translation of the book now:

Answer 22

The thesis of Eivind Uggedal is very nice: Social Navigation on the Social Web: Unobtrusive Prototyping of Activity Streams in Established Spaces

The source is at http://bitbucket.org/uggedal/thesis/src/

Answer 23

I cannot resist to show what all kinds of documents can be done by LaTeX, and I add this style for children books done by Paulo

Answer 24

Update: Template available under Stack Exchange TeX Blog and/or my PHD project website.

I wrote a German PHD thesis in LaTeX. In addition I used the beamer class to create the slides for the final presentation. Both PDF files can be found here (Bedienhaptik.de).

Thesis

---

The thesis was made using the koma class book and all the diagrams are made with pgfplots and tikz. I also used the hyperref package of course.

I used two colors (red, blue) in the document that are used for structure elements like section and headings and the colors are also used in diagrams.

The colors are:

• \definecolor[named]{myLayoutColorMain}{RGB}{0,26,153} (blue)
• \definecolor[named]{myLayoutColorAux}{RGB}{174,49,54} (red)

I used sans serif fonts for captions (tables, figures) and in diagrams. I think this looks nicer.

---

Presentation

---

The presentation was naturally done with the beamer class in combination with tikz and pgfplots.

On slide 10 the presentation contains an animation (pgfplots and animate package).

In order to use the official university font (Helvetica Neue) I had to use LuaLaTeX. With the help of the community here I managed to work it out.

---

Answer 25

Christoph Bier's typokurz is beautiful and useful; it's a 15-page guide to (German) (micro)typography in a nutshell. While it's just an article lengthwise (scrartcl, to be precise), it masterfully modifies many features frequently discussed on Tex.SX: section-titles, tables, footnotes, marginnotes, header ...

What's even better is that the preamble is available as well, it even is extensively annotated, but – that will be the downside for most users here – in German, just like the entire document is. Nonetheless, non-German speakers might still find their way around as well as some inspiration in the source code.

Answer 26

I got a directory "Beautiful TeX document" on my computer storing files that are beautiful and I might want to look at for inspiration when designing mine.

1. ArsClassica
2. ClassicThesis
3. the manual of pdfx
4. TKZdoc-linknodes-us

All of them can be found in CTAN. fontinstallationguide and tufte-sample-book have already been mentioned.

LaTeX companion 2nd edition has chapter-3 free on-line (http://www.latex-project.org/guides/tlc2-ch3.pdf). I think the typography is one of the finest.

Answer 27

Here are some screenshots of the pdf output of my Persian class, neveshtuft (in Persian: نوشتافت): a class based on the biditufte-book class. A sample pdf can be downloaded here. Unfortunately I can't make the source free to download, so it can only be purchased here.

Answer 28

I know I'm late to the party, but I have to plug something I've just discovered a few days ago: a style that mimics the book for Dungeons And Dragons 5e.

There's an image of the result in Github, but I'll add it here too so it can be easily enjoyed:

If the author reads this, know that you made my day when I found it. Awesome job!

Answer 29

I dedicated quite a bit of time to the typesetting of my Master's thesis. Therefore I am more than happy to share it with you.

https://www.politesi.polimi.it/bitstream/10589/92341/1/2014_04_Colombo.pdf

It is open source and available at https://github.com/gcedo/master-thesis/tree/master

Answer 30

I'm actually quite satisfied with how my Master thesis Synthesizing Software from a ForSyDe Model Targeting GPGPUs turned out.

Yes, another shameless plug...

EDIT: There have been requests on making the source code available. Since I don't want to release the full source, I've instead made a template available that you can then adapt to your own document. If you heavily base your own thesis report on this template I would appreciate if you made a small acknowledgement somewhere. Other than that - go nuts! =)