Make a Good Poster

Create and present your poster as if you were telling a story!

• The scope of many projects is too large to fit into a single good poster--it's all about editing the story you want to tell. Hear from one presenter about this process:

“To make my poster, I started by thinking about my art, which was the ready-made outcome of my project. I had all kinds of art: pencil sketches in my journal, acrylic disasters, marker drawings, graphic design pieces, and a whole variety of finished and unfinished pen and ink pieces. I knew I couldn’t include all of it. For instance, even though I had some graphic design pieces I really liked, I chose not to include them because I decided my poster would function better as a snapshot of my summer project, instead of as a summary.” —Major Grant Awardee 2017, ASURPS Presenter 2018

• Even if your project is something that could be described with text alone, try to think about what visuals would be interesting and helpful for your audience.
• Sometimes presenting a snapshot of your work can give the audience a more concrete understanding of what you did.

Design Tips

Content is important but style is often what attracts your audience.

• Use your design to guide your audience through the information. Try to create something eye catching, but easy to read.
• Use the center of your poster to display something visually interesting - perhaps an important image, a schematic of the project or a model of how all your data fits together.
• Consider using your section headings to make a statement - instead of “Results” try creating a short statement about the overall findings in each section of the poster. This makes every piece of text effective.
• Pick a simple color scheme that works well with the images you have chosen or figures you have created.

Poster Requirements

FOR ALL POSTERS:

• Students should review our Make a Good Poster page for content guidance.
• Dimensions of your poster: 42 inches (wide) by 36 inches (height).
• Design your poster as a slide in PowerPoint, and save the file as both a .ppt file and PDF.
  • To do this, create a new slide show and add a new slide by choosing “New Slide” from the “Insert” menu.
  • To change the dimensions of this slide to poster size, select “Page Setup” from the “File” Menu. Then change the width to 42 inches and height to 36 inches.
  • If you are submitting your poster with your application for printing, save the final poster in .pdf format and submit the PDF version.

  FOR IN-PERSON PRESENTATIONS:

  • If you are applying to present in-person, Undergraduate Research will print your poster free of charge if your poster is submitted with your application.
  • The computer connected to the plotter is a PC. If you are working on a Mac, check your file on a PC before submitting to ensure your fonts and images appear correctly.
  • Before submitting your poster for printing, double and triple check your file for errors such as spelling mistakes or overlapping images.
    • We will only be able to print your poster once.
    • Posters on foamcore will not be mountable or presentable at SURPS/ASURPS.
    • Posters which do not adhere to the above 42x36 guidelines will not be mountable or presentable at SURPS/ASURPS.
    • Lathrop Library
    • PhD Posters
    • FedEx