Poster creation guide and other resources

There exist a variety of guides to designing academic posters.

This resource provides a brief summary as well as links, below, to more descriptive resources.

Summary of best practices

Create the content and narrative before working on the poster design
- Write all text, get the high resolution images, figures (in vector format) & spell check your text!
- Having less can be more effective: be brief and clear
Determine the size of the poster
- This impacts the amount of information that will fit
- Which images may be suitable (sufficient resolution)
Provide a clear flow / organization, with breathing space
White space:
- Helps to show narrative structure and provide emphasis
- You may need blank space along edges for printing

Select a consistent set of fonts and colours
- Limit font types (2 max), and sizes, with a minimum font size of 22-24pt
- Serif fonts are easier to read for the body, sans-serif for the title or headings
To ease reading: Left justify, avoid long lines of text
Keep contrast
- Use faded underlays when placing text above images

Keep figures in vector format when possible (e.g., SVG, PDF)
Text in figures needs to be large
Images need to be high resolution to not be pixelated
When exporting to PDF:
- convert text to shapes
- set DPI of images if necessary

Try printing a small version to evaluate (in A4 or A3 rather than full size)
- annotate changes and suggestions directly to page
Share your test print or PDF with colleagues and family for feedback

on 2024-04-23