Need help putting together an academic poster for a conference or research day? Look no farther! This tutorial will walk you through every step.
http://www.researchtutorials.com/videos/pr/posterpresentation2.flvTable of Contents
- Introduction – 0:00
Learning Objective – 0:30
Poster Layout – 0:50
See an Example – 3:20
Option 1: Start from Scratch – 5:18
Option 2: Use a Template – 18:21
Get Inspired – 29:52
Printing your Poster – 30:45
TOTAL RUNNING TIME – 33:11
Resources Mentioned in this Tutorial
www.posterpresentations.com
www.postersession.com
www.posters4research.com
Footnote
This is something I didn’t cover in the video tutorial. PowerPoint doesn’t let you create a document with a width or height larger than 56 inches. So if you want to create a larger poster with any of these common dimensions (W x H) …
72 x 48 | 96 x 48 | 60 x 36 | 72 x 36 | 96 x 36
… you need to work at half size in PowerPoint. For example, if you want a 96 x 48 poster, set the width and height of your document (File > Page Setup) to 48 x 24 inches.
When you send your PowerPoint slide to the printer, just tell them the desired dimensions of your poster (e.g., 96 x 48). At print time, they’ll know to double the size of the slide you sent!
Of course, if you’re using a preset template (e.g., from one of the sites I mentioned in this tutorial), they’ve already applied this half-rule to the size of your slide. To double check, just go to File > Page Setup.
July 2nd, 2008 at 8:54 am
I love it. Couldn’t have been better timing for me, as I will be creating my first poster for an upcoming research expo. As an elected official of my Alumni, I am going to recommend this as a link be placed on our web page. This will be a great resource for current and post graduate students. Thank you!
July 27th, 2009 at 8:53 am
July 27th, 2009 at 8:55 am
Very well organized and presented guide to creating a scientific poster that takes the mystery out of the process. Provides just the kind of information needed by someone facing that task for the first time. I particularly like the combination of showing both the hard and easy ways – knowing how to do both can simplify the task by using templates while still permitting customization where necessary for the poster.
July 27th, 2009 at 8:55 am
Wonderful job this is one of the best tutorials I’ve seen on this subject.
You used our sites free template page as one of your examples.Thank you for helping get our name out there. However you stated certain areas of our templates were not editable. This is not the case – we just place the background, header boxes etc on the “slide master” to make object selection within them easier. This method isolates the templates background from the items placed by the user. The user can then move items in the box without having to worry about inadvertently moving the box itself. To make changes to any of these “un-selectable” items the user just needs to go to VIEW in the main menu and select MASTER then SLIDE MASTER from the pull down menu. The objects can then be selected and are fully editable.
July 27th, 2009 at 8:57 am
Perry:
Thank you for pointing that out! I always forget about the slide master; it should have occurred to me to look there. Perhaps I’ll do a tutorial on the slide master someday. It’s very handy for those who want to create their own reusable PowerPoint templates.
July 27th, 2009 at 8:58 am
The best templates I’ve found are the ones from posterpresentations.com and genigraphics.com and we’ve used both of those companies for printing. Genigraphics especially was very helpful in fixing our layout for free, and both produced excellent quality prints. You mentioned Kinkos and I have to say that was the worst nightmare I’ve ever had! I got my poster and the text was moved all over and running outside of the text boxes, etc. They blamed the problem on me for giving them a powerpoint file instead of a pdf file.
By the way, the templates from posters4research appear to have been ‘borrowed’ from posterpresentations.com and that seems rather odd. Perhaps they are one company?