Making Posters
Making an academic poster is a great way to publicise your work at a conference, but it requires both concise writing and clear layout. In this hands-on workshop we cover both of these topics: teaching students how to clarify and condense their text, and how to tell a story using graphics and captions. Participants are expected to familiarise themselves with the Purrington reading before coming along, as this is a practical session in which we’ll be laying out sample posters.
“I attended one of your making poster seminars some time last term and really appreciate the tips. Following your tips I won the best poster last February in an international conference held in Sydney. The seminar is really worth attending ;-)”
Tutor: Mike Dickison
Dates and times
- Monday, 14 November 2011, from 9.00 am to 12.00 noon: passed
- Friday, 23 March 2011, from 9.00 am to 11.50 am: enrolment and venue>>
Even if this workshop is fully booked, it is likely there will be space on the day, so feel free to turn up. If you would like to be notified when this course is next scheduled, request it at a different time or day, or just find out more, email Mike.
Resources
Most advice on making posters is out-of-date or just plain wrong; every the good books I've read on academic communication have very poor poster chapters. Most academic posters are terrible, and so (unsurprisingly) is most advice on how to design them!
- Colin Purrington of Swarthmore’s postermaking guide is a good place to start, and a helpful overview of the conventions of the poster session.
- The Better Posters blog (by Zen Faulkes) has lots of useful tips and makeovers. See, for example, the obession poster designers have with boxes, using OpenOffice Draw instead of PowerPoint, and the different graphics formats you'll use.
- A good collection of poster-making tips in this article from The Scientist.
- More poster design advice from Penn State College of Engineering and NC State and the American Society of Plant Biologists. The advice is sensible, but I'm not very impressed by their examples.
- UC Engineering PDF handout (Corel Draw and some layout tips)
- UC logo usage guidelines, and the logo itself (if you feel you must include it). I don't recommend you use the poster templates on that page.