Removing the author and date items from LaTeX titles
The template required for my interim project report uses a header on page 1 to provide name and date information, making those elements of the title which LaTeX usually generates with the \maketitle command redundant. Unfortunately,
if you leave them blank, the space for them is still there (rather, the padding around the elements is still there). The code below, inserted into the preamble of a document using article.sty, redefines the\maketitle behaviour
by changing the internal \@maketitle variant.
% Remove the author and date fields and the space associated with them
% from the definition of maketitle!
\makeatletter
\renewcommand{\@maketitle}{
\newpage
\null
\vskip 2em%
\begin{center}%
{\LARGE \@title \par}%
\end{center}%
\par} \makeatother