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Make a Better Poster

General Guidelines & Resources

Example Poster Templates

Font Size

Browser - 4m away

Deciding what to look at

80-40 - Title fonts

Potential viewer - 3m away -

Skimming the structure of the poster

>40 Title fonts; 24-28 section headers

Active viewer - 2-1m away.

Reading all of the poster text

24-29 section headers; 14-18 main text
Close examiner - 1-.5m away.
Reading all of the chart details and captions
12 fine text or 8-10 bold text

 

From Rowe, N. (2017). Academic and Scientific Poster Presentation: A Modern Comprehensive Guide. Springer International Publishing AG. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/brown/detail.action?docID=5017899

 

Image Resolution

If you are using images on your poster, you will need to check that they have a high enough resolution to translate from your computer screen to a large poster without becoming blurry.

Raster image types (.png, .tiff, .jpeg, .gif, .pcf, .bmp) may pixelate. You'll need at least 300 PPI (pixels per inch) or 150 DPI (dots per inch).

Vector image types (.svg, .wmf, .pdf) will not pixelate.

How to check your image resolution:

  • On Windows
    • Right click on the image, select properties.
    • Click on the "Details" tab.
  • On Mac
    • Open the image in Preview
      • Go to Tools, click "Show Inspector" to see DPI
      • Go to Tools, click "Adjust Size," then uncheck "Resample Image." Then, change the dimensions to your intended size (once printed) to see the resulting PPI.