A small repository to hold useful resources for various courses I teach.
Scan the below QR code to quickly access this repo:
This repository is intended to stimulate interest and awareness in the design aspect of posters – be they scientific or otherwise. It is also a place for me to transition my notes from the many years that I've been teaching some of this content. It is by no means gospel or complete, as I myself am still learning much. This is really just a collection of notes, lessons (many learnt the hard way!) and tips that I have gathered over the last few years. Hopefully after browsing through you’ll come away learning something yourselves – even if it’s just that PowerPoint is not the best piece of software for creating your posters... :)
Planning your poster before actually sitting down and working on the computer saves a lot of time later on, and will almost always lead to a better looking final product. Reading others experiences and taking on board tips and tricks allows you to expand your repertoire and should make the process more enjoyable.
- Betterposters – http://betterposters.blogspot.com/
“Academics use posters to present research, but their posters are often ugly, with tiny text, confusing layouts, and dubious colour schemes. Better Posters is about making posters informative and beautiful.”
There is also a really nice write up here about conference posters:
Some other interesting reads:
Your choice of software can make life much easier (or harder!), so spend some time thinking about what it is you are trying to achieve.
These programs can be freely downloaded and installed on any computer (windows, mac, linux), there are numerous tutorials and helpful forums and mailing lists to get you started. Both Inkscape and Scribus have rich tool sets and can be used to produce results which rival those of the “professional” packages – all for free!
- Inkscape
- Inkscape is the software I teach various courses with and I recommend it. There is a little bit of a learning curve but it is worth the price of admission in my opinion.
- see below for a list of suggested tutorials
- Scribus
- Open Office Draw
There are also free online tools:
Many people would have heard of Abobe Photoshop – well they also make design software in the same vein. Both Indesign and Illustrator are industry standards – as such they come at a price. 30 day trials may be downloaded if you want to play with them.
- Adobe - http://www.adobe.com/downloads/
- Indesign
- Illustrator
- Photoshop
- Microsoft Publisher – if you have MS Office you most likely have Publisher.
And then there’s...
- Powerpoint... All I'll say is that it does what it’s made for well, making slide show presentations. For posters not so much, I’ve listed many other options for a reason. If you absolutely must use Powerpoint it is possible, just take care as there are quite a few things that can go wrong.
There are some really nice online tools to generate great looking colour schemes for your presentation/poster.
- coolers.co
- very easy to use, great options including colour blindness tests
- colormind.io
- new site using deep-learning, can import an image and generate a colour scheme
- paletton.com
- an older site but still quite useful if the 2 above don't suit you
- Cloudflare Design
I've been asked how to do this a few times so I have created a quick guide with screenshots that will hopefully help explain the process. Please find the steps here.
Know your measurements. It is important to know what size of paper your final poster will be printed on – and you should determine this before you start! All software packages will allow you to set up page size – it is also import to determine which units you will be working in (I find mm the easiest and set this before I start).
Paper size charts:
Looking at others work and critically evaluating it is a great way to learn – think about what is done well, what could be improved upon? Create a list of techniques and attributes of posters that you could possibly employ into your own design.
Scientific Poster Repository
VISUALIZING BIOLOGICAL DATA VIZBI - posters
Additionally: Google Image Search – is a great place to view and critique many examples of poster design (be they scientific or otherwise). Use search strings such as poster design, scientific poster design, etc etc.
- A Graphic Design Revolution For Scientific Conference Posters
- Do Academic and Scientific Conference Posters Need a Drastic Change?
- an extremely good read with interesting insight.
- Designscience blog
There are lots of neat places to grab open-access / open-license pictures and images that may be freely used, edited and shared.
In addition to the 2 hour workshop that I run I'll try to maintain a decent list of extra tutorials that
Tutorials from the Inkscape homepage:
Lessons and frequently asked questions from the Inkscape homepage:
A great series on YouTube by user TJFree, each lesson is around about the 10-20 min mark. Here is a link to the whole series (link), I'll include the first 6 below and once you get a feel for whether these are useful you can feel free to browse the others - there are ~32 videos in total!
- Inkscape Lesson 1 - Interface and Basic Drawing
- Inkscape Lesson 2 - Shape Tools and Options
- Inkscape Lesson 3 - Fill and Stroke Settings
- Inkscape Lesson 4 - Groups, Levels, and Object Selection
- Inkscape Lesson 5 - Document Properties and Exporting PNG Images
- Inkscape Lesson 6 - Text and Fonts
A random assortment of other useful links:
- Designing posters with Krita, Scribus, and Inkscape: https://opensource.com/article/19/4/design-posters
- Creating a Science Conference Poster with Inkscape: https://dionhaefner.github.io/2015/07/creating-a-science-conference-poster-with-inkscape/
- Making a poster in Inkscape: http://bethmcmillan.com/blog/?p=1592
- Welcome and creating a scientific poster: http://huttenhower.org/welcome-and-creating-scientific-poster
- Inkscape poster template: http://greg-stacey.squarespace.com/extracurricular/2016/7/24/inkscape-poster-template
- GregStacey/InkscapePoster - Inkscape poster template: https://github.com/GregStacey/InkscapePoster
- 10 simple rules for designing a scientific poster: https://www.molecularecologist.com/2016/06/10-simple-rules-for-designing-a-scientific-poster/
...and finally for something a little different I'd like to link one of the most amazing and creative scientific posters I've come across: https://twitter.com/Ecology_forlife/status/1161726100147507201?s=03
- Importing coolors palettes into Inkscape: (link)
- Creating borders around objects (the 'cheats' way): (link)
Remember there is no right or wrong way to design a poster; everyone has different tastes and preferences.
- Life is much easier when you have all the elements of your poster ready before you start working in your chosen software. Have the bulk of your text written, have your figures ready, and grab a pencil and sketch out some possible layouts.
- Don’t be afraid to play around with your design, try something and see if it works. Bounce ideas of people and ask them to comment on your ideas and designs.
- Try to limit the amount of text on your poster, get your point across in a succinct way that will invite interested parties to ask further questions.
Mainly remember to enjoy yourself – you’ve done all the hard work in the clinic/lab/research, now it’s time to present this to others. Have fun with it and try to get your ideas and results across in a way that grabs the audience and makes sense.