Poster Design Tips

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Poster Design Tips

Contents
Basic principles Creating your poster Content of the poster Design suggestions Getting it printed Further reading LSE PhD Poster Exhibition Web resources Re-use of this page

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. If you are an LSE PhD stiudent, consider attending the course Poster Presentations: an introduction for PhD students which is offered by CLT.

Creating your poster

Some tips to get you started are given below, but you might also consider attending the Word 2010: Creating Illustrated Posters course run by IT Training. 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 can be 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. Return to Start of the page

Images and PDF conversion

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When converting your poster to PDF, take care that your images are not degraded in the process. They may look fine on-screen but then look blurry or pixellated when printed as A1 or A0. The following process, in Word or PowerPoint, will ensure that images retain their resolution up to A0 size (provided that they were sufficiently high-resolution in the first place - 300 pixels per inch should be sufficient). You can use these A0 settings even if the final poster will be printed as A1. First, set the page size: File > Page setup... (Word only) Choose Paper tab Set Paper size (Word) / Slides scaled for (PowerPoint) to Custom Set Width to 84.1cm and Height to 118.9 cm (A0) If using PDFcreator to convert to PDF, you have limited control over the conversion process, but you do need to set the paper size for the conversion: File > Print... Choose PDFcreator as the printer and click Properties Click Advanced... Set paper size to A0 if available, or Oversized A0 if not If using Adobe Acrobat: Adobe PDF > Change conversion settings > Advanced settings... Click the Images folder on the left Set Downsample: Bicubic downsampling to: 600 pixels per inch for colour and/or greyscale, as required Set Image quality to Maximum for colour and/or greyscale, as required Click OK. You might have to save the new settings. Finally, Adobe PDF > Convert to Adobe PDF

Embedding fonts
Important! It is always a good idea to embed the fonts within the PDF document you create. If you do not, there is a danger that one or more of the fonts you have used will not be present on the printer's system, and in which case the font you chose will be replaced by a substitute, and that can mess up the layout of your poster. How you do this depends on the way you convert to PDF; instructions for PDFCreator and Adobe Acrobat are given below: Acrobat: When printing the poster to Adboe PDF, click the Properties button in the Print window, and make sure the "Rely on system fonts only" box is not ticked. PDFCreator: After printing the poster to PDFCreator, a form will pop up. Click the Options button at the bottom of this form, then click PDF in the list to the left. Click the Fonts tab, and make sure the "Embed all fonts" box is ticked. Return to Start of the page

Content of the poster

Make sure the title and author's name are prominent and eye-catching 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. If you add an LSE logo, follow the LSE style guidelines for its use. Return to Start of the page

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

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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. Return to Start of the page

Getting it printed
Although LSE Reprographics only has facilities to print up to a size of A3 (42cm x 30cm), they can send work out to be printed by an external bureau. If you have a budget code, this is the simplest option. Prices are competitive with those shown in the table of local bureaux below. If you're in a hurry, you might need to use an external printing bureau. There are several close to the LSE, listed below. Most companies will accept your poster as a PDF file, which you can deliver on a CD or a USB drive, but check first to see if there are any particular requirements. Posters will be ready within 24 hours except where stated. The cheapest option is usually to use an online bureau, but you do have to wait for delivery. Online bureaux are listed in the 2nd table below. Whatever bureau you use, you may be asked what weight of paper you require. Typically, weights around the 170gsm (grams per square metre) will be sufficiently high quality.

Printing bureaux close to LSE

Name Kall Kwik The Color Company KWT Printing Services Ltd. London Print Company Note: Takes 2-3 days Service Point S.S.Graphics Ltd Address/map 186 Fleet Street EC4A 2HR 114 Strand WC2R 0AA 80 Long Acre WC2E 9NG 212 Shaftesbury Avenue WC2H 8EB 81 Endell Street WC2H 9AJ 21 Museum Street WC1A 1JN Telephone 020-7583-5207 020-7632-8820 020-7240-2062 020-7497-2862 020-7836-9422 020-7637-0371 Price for A1 poster* 42.00 36.00 24.00 28.80 24.00 30.00

* Prices include VAT at 20%. Quotes obtained by telephone on 18 May 2012.

Online printing bureaux

Name PWA UK Supersize Print URL http://www.pwauk.com/posters.htm http://www.supersizeprint.co.uk/ Price for A1 poster* 15.10 (silk or gloss) + 3.50 postage 13.79 (matt) + 3.99 postage

* Prices include delivery and VAT at 15%. Quotes obtained online on 17 May 2012.

LSE Reprographics
LSE Reprographics is based in G28, Old Building. Open 9:30 - 13:00 and 14:00 - 17:00 daily, phone 020 7955 7986. Check with your department before approaching Reprographics, to establish budget policy and code. Deliver your file by uploading it to the EPrint system which is available through LSEforYou. See Reprographics' How to use EPrint guide for details. Encapsulation (i.e. laminating the poster to make it durable and weatherproof) is also available, at a cost of 43p per A4 sheet and 74p per A3 sheet. Your poster should be ready within 3 days. Reprographics provide a full price listing (PDF).

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Further reading
Nichol, Adelheid A M and Pexman, Penny M. Displaying your findings: a practical guide for creating figures, posters and presentations. (2003) American Psychological Association. ISBN 1557989788. This book has a chapter on poster presentations and is available from the LSE Library. Gosling, Peter J.(1999) Scientists guide to poster presentations. Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers. ISBN 0306460769. Includes a good overview of the process of creating and delivering poster presentations. Return to Start of the page

LSE PhD Poster Exhibition

The 2nd LSE poster exhibition was held on 26 May 2011 as part of PhD Research Day Poster exhibition 2011

Poster exhibition 2011

The first LSE PhD poster exhibition was held on 26 May 2010 and attracted 58 entries.

All photos by Ly Voo (ALV Photography) View the exhibition posters online

Web resources
There are lots of useful resources on the web with information about how to create posters. Much of the guidance below is quite general: do remember to read the criteria specified by the conference you are hoping to attend very carefully. Infographics - "graphical explorations of data". This site contains many examples of rendering information visually accessible. Competition-winning posters from the University of Liverpool, 2009. The winners from 2008 area also available. University of Leeds' 2009 postgraduate poster competition. UCLs Media Services Illustration Unit have produced a Guide to successful poster production (PDF). Some of this is UCL-specific but there is useful general information as well. University of Newcastle's School of Chemical Engineering and Advanced Materials have tips and guidelines for poster presentation of research work. American Anthropological Association offer Creating Anthropology Conference Posters: A Guide for Beginners which is relevant to all social science posters.

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Creating effective poster presentations by George R. Hess of NC State University, Kathryn W. Tosney of the University of Miami and Leon H. Liegel of Oregon State University. A interactive tutorial about creating posters. Glasgow Caledonian University have some advice for students preparing poster presentations.

Sources of images
These are sites where you can obtain copyright-free images from use in your posters: MorgueFile - probably the best single source of free photos. Wikimedia Commons - archive of free multimedia content submitted by Wikipedia users. JISC Media Hub - Free images from the Getty collection. Google Images using the 'usage rights' filter. Flickr Creative Commons - an index of all Flickr images for which the owner has specified a Creative Commons licence (which usually means you can use it) FreeFoto.com. A collection of free photographs for private non-commercial use. Image*After - large, free photo collection, with images free for any use. The Creative Commons search allows you to search Google, Yahoo, Flickr and other sites for material that is licensed under the Creative Commons - which usually means you can use it without charge in a non-commercial context. For more sources of images, see CLT's multimedia resources listing.

Re-use of this page

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

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