Poster Guidelines

The following are production guidelines from Communications Services to help you create files and images for effective posters that deliver research data with the greatest visual impact. Once all elements of your poster are present and formatted according to these guidelines, turnaroundtime is two weeks. Not following these guidelines will mean your poster takes longer to complete, and will be more expensive.

Appointment with Communications Services

At least 3-4 weeks before the date you leave for the meeting, set up an appointment with graphic designer Donna Boyce to discuss layout and content. Before you meet, determine the space allotted at the conference for your poster by the professional organization. Bring a rough sketch of how you want the poster to look to the first meeting. You do not have to have all poster elements ready before the first meeting.

Text Preparation

All text should be in an unformatted Microsoft Word document, preferably as rich text format (RTF), with no imbedded graphics, page breaks, columns, text boxes or other formatting.

Image Preparation

Digital photographs and scans should be high resolution, 300 PPI TIFF files. Graphics should be high resolution TIFF or EPS. Each image should be a separate file. It is important that the images be the size they are to appear in the final document. A 300 PPI image that is only two inches square isn't sufficient if it will be eight inches in the full sized poster. Do not use images or graphics from web sites. In addition to copyright issues, web images are of insufficient resolution and poor quality which renders them unsuitable for posters. Digital images must be taken or scanned at high resolution—increasing resolution above the original in photoshop won't improve print quality.

If you have questions about scanning or would like to have images prepared, contact Joe Ogrodnick, or see the scanning guide.

Charts, Graphs and Tables

Each chart, graph or table should be a separate Microsoft Excel file. All the elements should be grouped together. Any text that is rotated sideways cannot be imported properly and should also be included in a separate word document.

Hard Copies

Please include hard copies of all your text, as well as any charts, graphs and tables. Bold, italics and special characters are often lost in moving text between programs and platforms, and without hard copies we have no way of knowing what was lost.

Electronic Copies

All your files should be e-mailed to Donna or put on a disk or CD and given to her along with hard copies.

Proofreading

This is one of the most important steps. Proofread the color comps carefully and have your professor check the poster before final output. This is critical in saving time, money and materials.

Questions

If you have any questions, please call Donna Boyce.