Poster Competition Resources

We are very excited about our Poster Competition. Entries are coming in from all over the world. To help you think about the poster competiton we have selected two resources that we hope you find useful. We are grateful to Steve Bond at LSE for the information he submitted below and also to UNC Graduate School for allowing us to link to their resources.

Poster and Presentation Resources compiled by the University of North Carolina Graduate School (US)

The UNC Graduate School has compiled a very impressive range of poster and presentation resources. These resources are very beneficial and interesting to researchers considering entering the Graduate Junction’s or other university poster competitions

UNC Graduate School’s Poster and Presentation Resources (opens in a new window)

Vitae Yorkshire Hub

For help and ideas about how to present research in the form of a poster, you may find inspiration at the Yorkshire and North East’s Vitae Poster Gallery which is now live following their offline competition which was held back in April 2008:

http://www.vitae.ac.uk/ynepostercompetition (opens in a new window)

Introduction to Poster Design

Basic Principles

A poster is a visual presentation of information and should be designed as such - do not simply reproduce your written paper in poster format.
It should be understandable to the reader without verbal comment - someone might look at it while you are talking to another delegate, or while you're in the toilet.
Remember, you are trying to catch the delegate's attention.

Creating your poster

You can use Microsoft Word or PowerPoint to create your poster. These are not graphical layout applications, but they are adequate in most cases.

In PowerPoint, create your poster as a single slide. You can set the page size when you start using File > Page Setup, so if you want an A1 poster (594mm × 840mm), you can specify this before you start (there may not be an A1 option, but you can enter the dimensions manually).
PowerPoint also allows you to add guidelines to help you line up the poster elements. Use View > Grid and Guides... and tick the Display grid on screen box.
In Word, create your poster as a single side of A4. You can always scale it up when you come to print it.
Word does not have guidelines as such, but you can get a grid by showing the Drawing toolbar (View > Toolbars > Drawing) which will probably appear at the bottom of the screen, then from that toolbar choose Draw > Grid... and tick the Display gridlines on screen box.
In both applications, use the Drawing toolbar to add text boxes to the screen. This allows you to control the way the text is positioned on the page.

When the poster is designed, you should convert it to PDF for printing, using PDF Creator or Adobe Acrobat. The conversion process is often problematic: edges of words and images may be cut off near to the margins, images may appear degraded or misshapen, poster elements may have shifted and become overlapping. However, by ironing out these problems at the conversion stage, you avoid nasty surprises later when you come to print it out. When the PDF looks good, you can be pretty confident that the printed version will also be OK.

Test your poster early, and regularly, by converting to PDF and printing to A4, to make sure you're not storing up layout problems that will be difficult to correct later on.

Content of the poster

Tell a story: provide clear flow of information from introduction to conclusion
Focus on your major findings - a common fault is to try to cover too much. Few delegates are going to read everything on your poster, so get to the point.
Use graphs, tables, diagrams and images where appropriate. Use boxes to isolate and emphasise specific points.
Always follow the conference guidelines, which may be specific about what you are expected to present.
Make sure the title and author's name are prominent and eye- catching

Design suggestions

Use all the space at your disposal, but do not cram in the content - white space is an important part of the layout, and good use of it can make a poster elegant and arresting.
Use colour sparingly - limited use of a few colours is more striking than a 'rainbow' approach. Think about why you are using colour; it is especially useful for emphasis and differentiation.
Avoid colour combinations that clash (e.g. red on blue) or cause problems for people with colour-blindness (e.g. red and green in proximity).
Use white or muted colour background (e.g. pastel shades)
The flow of information should be clear from the layout; if you have to use arrows to indicate the flow, the content could probably be arranged better.
Clearly label diagrams/drawings and provide references to them in the text where necessary.
Again, follow the conference guidelines, which may be quite specific about paper sizes, font sizes etc.
The title text should be readable from 6 metres away - at least 48-point text. (Note that if you are creating your poster in A4 format, to be blown up to A1 format later, the final printed font size will be approximately 3 times the size you are working with.)
The body text should be readable from 2 metres away - at least 24-point text
Choose a clear font with large inner space (i.e. the space inside the loops of letters such as 'o', 'd', 'p'). Good examples are Arial, Verdana, Georgia or Helvetica.
Keep the word count as low as possible.