Creating Conference Poster Presentations: A Basic Guide Evan Harrington, Ph.D. Poster by Christa Jones and Evan Harrington, presented at the 2008 AP-LS conference

Poster presentations can be pleasingly straightforward or obnoxiously confusing. Having created a number of posters, and seen thousands at various conferences over the years, I have seen that some techniques work better than others An important point to remember is that you can have the best ideas in the world, but if you have a shoddy presentation few people will stop to look at your poster. On the left is a well organized poster from a conference, and you can clearly see the tables and graphs (it is self-explanatory). Meanwhile, on the right is a poster that is confusing and has to be explained by the presenter.

In order to achieve professional looking results, it is important to be willing to make the investment to have the poster professionally printed. There are many places to go for wide-format poster printing. In fact, I have a wide-format Epson printer at home. Nevertheless, I still send my posters out for professional printing. The printing company I use is called I should point out that I have absolutely no financial stake in this printing company. I like them because they are fast and reliable.

This printing company offers a variety of sizes and types of paper. I prefer the “professional photo-satin” option. This is essential photo type paper with a semi-gloss finish. Next, you will want to choose a size for the poster. Below is an example of one of my posters at the 36x72 inch size ($95 for the satin paper)

The size of the poster should be based on how much you have to say, and whether or not you have a lot of graphics. The smallest size is 36x48. This may sound like a lot of space, but as you can see from the examples, a lot of space gets taken up by the title and the graphics. Once you have a size chosen, you can download the appropriate template from the printer’s web page.

The templates are simply large powerpoint slides. Your poster will consist of a single powerpoint slide, which can be ed to the printer when it is ready. If you are familiar with powerpoint then the formatting will be easy. If not, you’ll learn some basics as you play with it. Your font size should be large enough that people standing 3 or 4 feet away can read it easily. Eighteen or 20 point font works well. Do not go smaller than 18 point font. For the sake of clarity, I tend to prefer a solid background with a subtle color. I have seen posters with pattern or photographic backgrounds that were impossible to read. You can use graphics file directly from SPSS (you’ll need to use the SPSS chart editor to export the image). In my poster a couple slides back you can see that I used some SPSS frequency data in the form of figures. You can also use photographs – The photo of the Supreme Court is one that I took. I simply dropped the image into my powerpoint slide.

As for the text of the poster, I find it best to type out the text in Word and then cut and paste it into the poster. The templates come with text in them, so you’ll need to delete it. You can adjust the colors of the poster according to your liking, and you’ll need to move the borders around to fit your text and images. Helpful hint: The text does NOT continue from one column to the next (or at least I don’t know how to make it wrap). Once the first column was filled I had to cut and paste text into the next column. Another hint: Powerpoint tends to want to erase your formatting when cutting and pasting, so you’ll need to reset your font type and size after pasting text.

Printing When you are ready to print you will need to create an account with the printing company through their web page. Once all your information is saved you’ll need to upload the file. After uploading the file, give them a few minutes and then call the printer (9-5, west coast). They will send back a PDF proof copy for inspection. After you approve, they will send the file for printing on their wide-format printer. The poster will be shipped FedEx, and you get a discount on shipping when you have more than 1 poster. They can ship the poster to your home, school, or the hotel that a conference is being held at. I have never had a problem receiving the poster on time. A final word regarding graphics: Photoshop is an excellent graphics editing tool for adjusting photographs. It is expensive, but older versions work well and can be obtained cheaply.