Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Organization
The structural elements of a poster are, in general terms, the same as in a talk, but
are laid out hierarchically rather than shown in linear order.
Posters can be vertical (portrait orientation) or horizontal (landscape). Landscape
is preferable—it communicates better, and is easier for the listener—but in a crowded
poster hall may not be an option. The first step in poster design is to establish
whether landscape is available, and then you need to establish what size you can
print (A0 or A1), which will determine how detailed the poster can be.
An authoring tool will be used for most of the work of creating your poster, but
in my experience the early stages are most easily done by hand, on either paper or
whiteboard. Typically, my first step is to choose a couple of figures and tables that
I think will be of value, and then do a rough sketch of the poster on an A3 sheet of
paper, with boxes showing where the main elements will be placed. I then annotate
this sketch with bullet points, giving a first draft of the text that might be included.
These rough sketches can save a lot of work later on.
I also use paper to sketch potential diagrams. Compared to the style that is typical
of a paper, these can be more dramatic or artistic (though you should only create such
images if you can do so at a high standard). A poster should be attractive to potential
listeners, and vivid illustrations help work to be noticed, while an A1 block of solid
text in small font is extremely uninviting. But stay within reasonable bounds—you
are attending a conference, not an exhibition, and you should avoid implying that
your work is not serious science.
A useful way to think of a poster is as an arrangement of discrete regions, each
used to communicate one element of the work. One box might be a figure, another
some bullet points motivating the problem, another a table giving results. The boxes
can be arranged in a simple grid, but other layouts may make the poster seem more
dynamic—you should experiment with alternatives. A particular factor to consider is
height. It is easier to read and comprehend material that is at eye level; in a landscape-
orientation poster, roughly speaking, it is easiest to read the top half, while in portrait
orientation it is easiest to read the top third. The lower part of the poster can be used
for the detail that only a truly interested listener will want to explore, and thus can
be in smaller fonts and have a more technical appearance. The upper part is where
the succinct, lightweight version of the narrative is delivered.
Your choice of authoring tool may be limited by the printing facilities to which
you have access; for example, some specialised image tools do not produce PDF
output. Inkscape is widely used for posters, as is Microsoft
R
PowerPoint. You can
use these tools to create poster elements separately, to see how big they need to be,
before deciding how they are going to be integrated into the whole. But whatever
tool you use, plan to spend significant time in polishing and revising—good layout
is a highly manual task.
Occasionally a presenter will have a poster that is a series of ten or twelve slides,
each printed on an A4 piece of paper, pinned up in rows. This design does not
communicate well, and, often, such posters fail to attract any interest.
