Poster-making 101

by Brian Pfohl (bpfohl@bates.edu)
(Portions written by Greg Anderson)

This guide is designed to highlight common technical issues that arise while creating a poster in PowerPoint.  If you wish to have access to the poster printer at the Bates College Post & Print department, you must follow the guidelines in the Essentials section.  The Additional Tips section has suggestions for improving the look of your poster and for dealing with common technical issues. I also offer some advice on designing your poster in the Think About Your Audience section. Click on the index below to see a specific topic.

If you want to read more about the principles of good design for a poster, please check out Seri Rudolph's Preparing an Effective Poster (PDF file) from the Bates College Writing Workshop.

Table of Contents

Essential information for preparing a poster for the poster printer

For additional guidelines about formatting and submitting your poster to Post & Print, please refer to their website here.

1. Poster size: You will be creating a single large slide in PowerPoint.  The recommended size is 36" x 48". Before adding any content to your slide, go to the Design ribbon and click Slide Size: Custom Slide Size to change the height and width. 

Once you have the proper size, you may begin adding content to your poster.  You may do this by inserting textboxes, images, graphs, etc.  If you change the page size after you already have content, you may distort all of the objects on the page.

2.  Margins: It is essential to leave at least a 1 inch margin around the edges of the poster.  The easiest way to see whether your margins are correct is to use the Grid and Guidelines features.  Go to the View ribbon and check out the three checkboxes to turn on the Ruler, Gridlines, and/or Guides features.

The Grid will superimpose a grid with one inch squares on your slide.  You can turn the grid off again by unchecking the appropriate box.  The Guidelines can help you judge the horizontal and vertical center of your poster.  These can be dragged to other locations using the mouse.  Holding Ctrl while dragging will create a copy of an existing guideline instead of moving it.  Important: The Grid and Guidelines features have inexplicably been left out of some version of PowerPoint for Mac. 

3. No dark backgrounds: It is strongly encouraged that the background of your slide uses light colors. Most of the preset Design Templates in Powerpoint are created for on-screen presentation and are way too dark to print.  To use a different color background from the default white, right-click on your slide (but not on any objects such as an image or textbox) and choose Format Background.... A panel will open on the right which allows you to choose different background colors.

I'll take a brief break from technical tips to offer some suggestions on design issues.  (More tech tips resume in the Additional Tips section.)

During a typical poster presentation, you will be expected to stand near your poster to talk to people attending the poster session.  Yours will be one of many posters in the same room or exhibit hall.  As you are designing your poster, it's important to think about the different types of people that you will interact with so that everyone can learn something about your project.  There are at least three different types of people that will visit your poster.

The Skimmer

The Skimmer is a person who comes by and reads the basics about your project.  They will certainly read your title along with any other text that is written in a prominent font.  They will look at your pictures, tables, and graphs and possibly the accompanying captions.  Then they will move on.  They will probably not talk to you at all.  Even though the Skimmer doesn't spend much time with your poster, they deserve to come away with a basic understanding of your project. You should consider communicating your basic premise and results in a large, easily accessible font to appeal to this type of audience.  If you do this effectively, some of your Skimmers may become Readers to learn more about your project.

The Reader

The Reader is either a converted Skimmer or somebody who has an intrinsic interest in your topic or discipline.  They will spend more time with your poster and read most or all of the text. They will not talk to you much initially, but may stay to ask clarifying or follow-up questions.  Without interacting with you at all, the Reader should come away with a detailed understanding about what you did, why you did it, and what you found.  Your text should contain enough detail to satisfy these three points.  The best way to appeal to and encourage Readers is to make most of your text in bulleted lists rather than paragraph form.  Also, clearly label or indicate visually the different sections of your poster (Hypothesis, Results, Directions for Future Research, etc....)

The Chatter

The Chatter can be the most aggravating or the most interesting type of person that you will encounter.  They will walk up and (sometimes without even reading your title) ask "What did you study?"  While it's tempting to point to the brilliant prose on your poster and say "Read!", this probably isn't the best approach. You will be expected to explain the basics of your project multiple times during a poster session.  You should not only think about the best way to explain your project verbally, but you should design your poster to serve as a visual aid during this explanation.  You can walk your Chatter through the various steps of your project, pointing out pictures, diagrams, graphs, tables, etc. along the way.  You do not want to read your poster to the Chatter, but rather rephrase things in your own words and invite them to ask questions along the way.  In order to appeal to the Chatter (and make your job easier when dealing with them), it is important that you have more than just text on your poster.  See the sample posters at the bottom of this web page for examples of diagrams that can be great visual aids while explaining your project verbally.  With the right preparation, the interactions that you have with a Chatter can be highly rewarding and can even inspire you to apply your project in a new way or give you ideas for future research.

You should always include your name prominently on your poster. If you are planning to present within the department, this may be sufficient although some people choose to include their adviser's name as well. Depending on where you are planning to present, you may want to include additional information.  For example, if you are presenting at the Mt. David Summit or another campus-wide event, you may choose to include what department you were doing research with.  If you are presenting off-campus, you may want to mention Bates College or any other institution that sponsored your project.

Zoom

Use the zoom slider in lower right corner of PowerPoint to view your poster at different resolutions.  Use the "Fit slide to current window" button to see the entire poster.

Here are some suggestions for types of fonts and sizes. For reference, a 100 point font is about an inch high.

•     For the title, consider using a large, bold san-serif font, such as Arial Black, Franklin Gothic Heavy, Tahoma, Trebuchet, or Verdana.  Make the font size between 72-120 points.
  
•   For the subtitles (authors' names, school name, etc.), use the same font as your title but make the font size smaller than the title.  A font size between 48-80 points usually works best.
•   For the section headers (Abstract, Introduction, Results, etc.), use the same font as your title and subtitle.  Make the font size approximately 50% larger than the body text, between 36-72 points.  Make sure that all section headers are the same font size.
•   For the body text, choose a serif type that is very readable, like Garamond, Book Antigua or Bookman Old Style.  Make the font size between 24-48 points. Make sure that the body text is the same font throughout the entire posters.
  
• DON'T USE ALL CAPS for any portion of your poster.  It is harder to read and it looks like you are shouting.
• Be conservative.  First of all, familiar fonts are easier for your audience to read.  Secondly, unusual fonts or using many different fonts in the same poster can be distracting and make your poster look cluttered.

• To format a text box, right-click anywhere inside it, then select Format Shape from the pop-up menu.  To select a background color with which to fill your object, use the the Fill subsection of the Fill and Line section of the right panel. 
• To create a border around a text-box, right-click anywhere inside it, then select Format Shape from the pop-up menu.  Use the the Line subsection of the Fill and Line section of the right panel.  Click on Solid Line to choose your preferred line color, dash type, and width.  (The default width of .75 points is usually much too small for posters. Try 3-6 points for a border.)
• Grouping objects together: To facilitate rearrangement of objects on your poster, it may be advantageous to group some of them into a single object so they can be moved as a unit, retaining their relative position to each other. For example, you may wish to group an image object along with the text box object containing the caption for that image. To group objects, select one by left-clicking on it.  Once the first object is selected, hold down the Shift key, then left-click while holding Shift to select the next object. Select as many additional objects as you like using Shift Left-click. To form a group from all of the selected objects, right click on one of them, then select Group: Group from the pop-up menu.  To confirm that objects are grouped, check that the objects are surrounded by a single set of white boxes, rather than individual sets of handles for each object.  To reverse the grouping procedure, click any object in the group, right-click and select Group: Ungroup from the pop-up menu.

To insert a picture into your presentation, choose Insert: Pictures to add an image from a file.  You can also use the clipboard to copy and paste images from other sources.

If you would like to include photos or other images in your presentation, be very wary of using images from the internet.  Although they may look fine on the screen, these images are low-resolution and may not look good when printed, particularly if you increase the size of the image in PowerPoint.  It is possible to find high resolution images online.  The best way to do this is to do an image search at Google.com and change the size setting so that you only search for Large images.  From the search screen, click the Tools button below the search bar to enable the size dropbox.
Photos taken with a digital camera are usually high resolution and should print well.  Scanned images should be at least 150 dpi (dots per inch) in resolution and saved as a high quality jpg file.

An alternative to using a photo is to use clip art. While you can find clip art using a google image search (change the Type to "Clip Art"), Powerpoint offers many options under Insert: Icons.... This will open up the PowerPoint Icon which enables you to type a keyword or browser their categories to find matching clipart. Simply click on an image to insert it in the center of your presentation.  The advantage of clipart is that it can be resized more flexibly than photos without losing quality.  The disadvantage of clipart is that it can appear cartoony and the selection can be limited.  Clip art can be a fun way to add something besides text to your poster to give it more visual appeal.

When resizing images of any kind, you should avoid distorting the image perspective.  The best way to resize an image is to select it and then drag the corner handle. If you resize using the corner handles, the height-width ratio will be maintained so that the image isn't distorted.  If you resize using the side, top or bottom handles, it will only change one dimension of your image and will distort it. To check whether an image is distorted or not, right click on it and choose Format Graphic.... Switch to the Size & Properties section in the right panel.  If the height and width percentages under Scale are not equal, the image is distorted.  This panel is also useful for resizing an image to an exact size so that you can align multiple images.

For best results, graphs should be created in Excel and then copied and pasted into Powerpoint.  To do this, select your graph in Excel.  Right-click on it and choose Copy.  Then return to Powerpoint and choose Edit: Paste. (The shortcut keys ctrl-C and ctrl-V work, too!)

You will probably want to resize your graph in Powerpoint.  Select the graph and drag one of the corner handles (not the ones on the sides, top or bottom). If you change the relative height and width of your graph while resizing in Powerpoint, all text in the graph will be distorted.  However, Excel does not have this problem.  If you want to change the proportions of your graph, do it in Excel before inserting it in Powerpoint.  If you have already imported your graph, simply delete the graph in Powerpoint, change the proportions in Excel, and copy and paste the revised graph back into Powerpoint.

Once a graph is imported, you can still make changes to it by double-clicking on the graph. This will give you almost all of the options that you have in Excel for changing the text and look of the graph.

Sometimes you may want to add additional information to a graph besides the basic axis labels, legend, etc. The best approach is to create the the basic graph in Excel, copy and paste it into PowerPoint, and then use PowerPoint to add additional lines, labels, etc.

The graph above was modified using this method.  The three dotted lines and four additional text labels were added in PowerPoint, using the Line drawing object and text boxes.

The title is the first thing that your reader will look at (and hopefully not the only thing!)  Your title should be interesting, easy to understand, and encourage the reader to check out your poster in more detail.  In addition, the formatting of the title can set the mood for the entire poster.  Check out the font suggestions to use in your title.  In addition, here are a couple of ways to spice up the look of the title text a little bit.

Shadow

Text Box Effects

In addition to changing the color of the title text, you can also change the formatting of the text box to alter the background of your title. Check out the basics of adding a color fill or a border to a text box in this section.

Although there are many options available within PowerPoint for fancy text formatting, if you have access to Adobe Photoshop, you will be able to do much, much more.  Using the text tool and the blending options (drop shadow, outer glow, etc.), you can create almost any text effect you can imagine.  Just save your image as a high-quality JPG or GIF and make sure that it is 150 or 300 dpi so that the image is print quality.  Then insert your title as an image.  (This example uses the recommended Arial Black font.) A word of caution: Photoshop is a very complex application and can be confusing to first-time users. Using Photoshop for your poster project may be more time-consuming than it is worth unless you have prior experience or other assistance.

Important: Above all a title must be readable!! Use these tips to draw attention to your title without letting the effects distract from the text itself!

If you have blocks of text, a quick way to give your poster a cleaner look is to do a full justify on the text.  The default left justify will make the left margin of your text even, whereas a full justify makes both sides even. Highlight the text you'd like to change and click on the Full Justify icon from the Home ribbon.

Although it's perfectly fine to use a white background, PowerPoint gives you quite a few options to spice things up.  You may choose to use a different color, a color gradient, or even a picture as the background to your poster.

To access any of these options, right-click anywhere on the slide where there isn't already another object (like an image or a textbox), and choose Format Background.  The right panel that opens will give you options to choose a Solid Fill, Gradient Fill, Picture or Texture Fill, or Pattern Fill.

Solid Fill simply allows you to choose a different solid color for your background.

Gradient Fill configuration is fairly straight-forward and easy to use.  You can select two or more colors that will fade into each other in your background. However, remember that even when you are using a gradient, you may not violate the principle of No Dark Backgrounds, so use light colors in your gradient.

Picture or Texture Fill allows you to select a file that will be used as the background image of your poster. While this can be a striking effect, it can be tricky to choose and configure an image.

Image resolution is a challenge here.  It is very difficult to find an image that is print-quality at poster scale.  For this reason, you must be prepared to accept a certain amount of pixilation and loss of quality.  Also, it is best if you start with the highest resolution that you can find.

Lightening your image:  Almost any unaltered image will be too dark to print and will be too dark for readers to be able to read your poster.  There are two ways to lighten your image.  The first is to change the image itself.  You can open up your image in Photoshop, add a white layer on top of the image and then adjust the opacity of the white layer so that your image is lightened.  (You may also choose to adjust the brightness/contrast of the image in Photoshop instead.)  Save the file in Photoshop and then use the altered image as your background. 

A second way to lighten your image is in PowerPoint itself.  Apply the unaltered image as the background.  Then create a rectangular autoshape that completely covers the poster.  Right-click on the shape to adjust the color and transparency settings of the shape so that the background image can show through.  In order to have this autoshape affect the background image but not the other objects on your poster, right-click on the shape, and choose "Order: Send to Back".

Be careful about using busy backgrounds, as they can easily make a poster look cluttered and hard to read.

According to APA style, you should indent all but the first line for any references that you list.  (Note: it is not mandatory to list references on a poster.  Check with your advisor if you are unsure whether to include references.)  In order to do this, list your references in a different textbox from your other text. Put your cursor in the textbox and you will see a ruler with indentation controls around the perimeter of your slide.  (If you do not see the ruler, go to View: Ruler to enable it.)  Adjust the position of the indentation controls as shown to indent your text.  Note: these controls can also be used to adjust the positioning within bulleted lists.

Even though your PowerPoint slide is designed to print at a very large scale, it is possible to print the whole thing on a letter-sized piece of paper.  This is useful for two reasons. First of all, it may be easier to proofread, check layout issues, and share drafts with others when it is on paper instead of just in PowerPoint. Secondly, some presenters at professional conferences hand out mini versions of their poster to visitors who would like to bring the information home with them.  Here's how to print a mini version of your poster.  Go to File: Print and make sure that the Scale to Fit Paper option is checked.  This is located under the Print Layout option on the Print dialog.

All sample posters are in PDF format.

Sample #1: Features great use of photos and bulleted text instead of paragraphs.

Sample #2: Features custom diagrams and a clean layout despite a very complicated research project.

Sample #3: Features photos as part of the poster background in a way that is not distracting.

Sample #4: Features several different graph types and a nice clean look