1. HOW TO MAKE A POSTER A PRETTY POSTER GOES A LONG WAY

2. GUIDELINES IMPORTANT: 50% of poster must be WHITE (NO COLOR AT ALL) – Extra Cost Use color, just intelligently Files must either be Powerpoint or PDF files Adobe Illustrator is great, huge learning curve Powerpoint: Least functionality, but easy to use – I recommend this Page Setup – DO THIS FIRST, TRUST ME. Change to landscape Width – 48 to 54 Height – 42 (FIXED DUE TO PRINTER)

3. POSTER LAYOUT Text should be readable from FOUR feet away Make it pretty. You can make a super boring poster quickly, but then you have to stand by yourself talking to no-one for an hour during the symposium COLUMNS HELP Text goes from left to right, Upper left in columns, end in bottom right. You don’t have to follow this, but be wary, can be confusing if not done right. WORDS BAD. PICTURES GOOD. Seriously. Don’t have walls of text because no one will read it. A picture describing what you did, a graph, a chart, a diagram, anything but text walls. But, you still need some text, just minimize it. DON’T FORGET WHITE BACKGROUND OR ELSE $$$$

4. NEVER USE ALL CAPS  See what I did there? Bold, italics, larger font size instead Text doesn’t have to be the same as everyone else’s! Be consistent within your poster though. Rough guideline, change as needed ~96-144 pt for title ~60 pt for authors ~48 point for headings ~30-38 for body text ~20 for fine print, i.e. captions Use color to your advantage

5. TITLES: Short and to the point Attention Grabbing Summary of what poster entails Don’t try to over impress with the title Good Titles: “Costs of Public Space Recycling in New York City” “Cooling Effects of Dirt Purge Holes on the Tips of Gas Turbine Blades” “Particles in Microdischarge Plasma: Coulombic Interactions and Optical Effects” “Gap-Crossing Decisions by Red Squirrels in Fragmented Forests” “Studying Neural Alterations in a Model of ‘Blindsight’ ”

6. IMAGES! Make sure your images look good on your computer, need to be clear and sharp Resolution – 150 ppi 72 ppi WILL look pixelated Use insert. Don’t copy and paste or drag and drop. Will mess with image resolution and make things fuzzy. These images are like a foot tall. You don’t want them blurry. Image resolutions of 150 ppi at actual size reproduce Photographic quality. Resolutions higher than 150 ppi do Not increase image quality, only file size. Scaling Images to a larger size decreases their resolution. Images from websites are generally 72 ppi and will look pixilated If scaled to a larger size.

7. WHAT DO YOU PUT ON YOUR POSTER!?! TITLE AUTHORS (You are first! Don’t forget grad students/post docs who you work with and always have the PI.) Emory/SIRE Logo Affiliation of Authors (The above three should all be at the top) POSTER BODY! Introduction/Background Can be wordy, pictures really help. Methods/Process Can you make your methods out of pictures? Results/Findings Preliminary results are results. Conclusions/Future Direction Super important because most of you won’t have data ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS – Super important because funders like to be recognized. SIRE, EMORY, others who assisted, but not authors

8. FINAL NOTES PROOFREAD PROOFREAD AGAIN AND THEN MAKE SURE YOU DIDN’T SPELL SOMETHING WRONG. Remember, your font is HUGE. How do you transport your poster? Consider getting a tube. Or a bag. Keep water away, try and keep it fresh until day of poster presentation. You are presenting at a symposium. This goes on your résumé/CV. It’s valuable.

9. DESIGNING YOUR OWN TEMPLATE GET STARTED ON YOUR DESIGN. It sounds silly, but it takes a long time. MENTORS: Why did you use that layout? Number of columns, layout, flow, etc. Why those colors? Why those figures? What would you change about it now? Favorite parts about it? What sucks about it? Explain the struggle.