•Posters for Special Topic •A GREAT POSTER Has ... •Readability, the measure of how easily the ideas flow from one item to the next. –Text with grammatical problems, complex or passive sentence structure, and misspellings is "hard to read". •Legibility, text can be easily deciphered. 2-3 m away. •Good spatial organizationhelps reach 95% rather than 5% of people. •Think of your Audience •Time spent finding information and ideas in your work is time lost to the reader and taken away from thinking about the science. •Be succinct, you have 7 seconds to catch someonesattention. •Make the punchlineprominent and brief. •The tools, posters can be quickly with a word processor and some graphics packages like. Microsoft Powerpoint, Macromedia Freehand, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe PageMaker. • •Decide on a main message •Keep it short and make it your title.  –Use active voice (avoid "ing" on the ends of verbs) and avoid the verb "to be". •Lay out your space physically on paper to double-check yourself. –USE pieces of paper about the right size, to see if it all fits. –This saves time in the long run. •ELIMINATE all extraneousmaterial •The average poster gazer spends less than 10 minutes on your work and you have 7 to 11 seconds to grab their attention before they move on. •Only show data that adds to your central message. •Not for this paper but in other places ,
  Consider hand-outs that include the full poster in miniature with the other material on the opposite side.  Methods, references, detailed contact information etc. •Making the poster •Start with individual parts then –consider how to arrange poster elements and text within panels • •Peopleapproach new information in a known spatial sequence:
we track vertically from centre top to bottom, and horizontally left to right. • •So put the most important message in the centre top followed by the top left, top right, bottom left, and finish in the bottom right corner. •That's why the title should be your punch line in that position,
So the title and your name will be seen first by anyone looking at the poster. • •The format is dictated by the way we assimilate information. –Never put the first panel on the right so your reader has to proceed to the left, we just don’t read that way. •The Newspaper two column format means you read first left and then the right is good as the reader needn’t spend time working out which to read next. •Left to right horizontal rows works but is not common. Many variations are used. • •Use space •Space, in a poster: gives the reader visual pauses to think.
Books have space in margins and have chapters to break up messages. • •The reader needs to assimilate your ideas easily. •Posters dense with information are seldom read completely.
Omit extraneous text and visual distractions such as borders between related data and text.  •Use the size of poster elements and fonts to emphasize the main points. •Example, make subheadings in capitals and two font sizes larger than the rest of the text on the same panel to draw the reader's eye first, and be emphasized. •Layout words thoughtfully •Too many fonts can distract from the science. • • • • • • •Follow the same ideas of poster layout to your words, spatially arrange the text in each panel. A street sign with the word "children" in capitals in the centre of the image, means you read "Children, go slow" even though that is not the actual arrangement of words. This is powerful, succinct, and highly readable. • •Practical things •It takes time. Allow 2 to 3 days to assemble photos diagrams etc, –and then another 1.5 to 2 days to put it together for best effect. •FONT size, Fonts need to be big to be effective. –Stand back from your own poster. –If you can’t easily read it from 2 Metres your audience won’t be able to. •highlighting and text format, –Indents setting text apart and are good for short lists. –Centre justified text draws attention. •Choosing a font/highlighting and font variations. –Choose a basic font whose "e's" and "a's" stay open at all sizes and is supported by your printer.  Bookman, Helvetica, and Geneva are good. –Serif or sans serif is really your choice. •Highlightinga few parts of the text can be done with fonts, italics, bold, Capitals, shadows etc, it doesn’t have to be colour. •Colour •A colour border or backgroundis fast and easy. –Choosecolours that don’t compete with your data and look good printed.  –Make sure colour blind people can see your display by switching everything to “Grey scale” (its an option on pictures in word), you can put it back to colour easily. •Simple Diagrams are betterthan photographs. •Proper contrastreduces eye strain and makes it more legible. •Too much contrast makes it difficult •Don’t let the colour swampthe visual impact of your data. •Colour can distract from the data, –but light backgrounds to figures can make the poster more attractive. •Example, white text on a blue background can be eyecatching •Fidelity •fidelity of reproduction, –Images are rarely the same on the computer screen and on paper. –Some images will blur and soften and text edges can be uneven. •Try a small to print and see what things look like a few times. • •CHECK BEFORE assembling THE POSTER •Before you call it finishedAsk others to look at your  Poster. –Fix things before the presentation, otherwise its too late. •Ethics –Follow normal rules about authorship, referencing etc. •If you modify images with Photoshop state what you have done. •Do not falsify data, you must be able to defend what you have done. •Do not plagiarise. List where your images come from in the references • •FINISHING OFF YOUR POSTER •The easy part once you have identified and made all the parts. •Give yourself enough time to finish the poster, some say 1-3 days, in case you need time to change colour or content. •You need to submit your final poster as a word document and a PDF.  •Both of these behave differently on the A3 colour laser printer that we use (I will be able to choose the best in print). •You need to have tried to print your poster A4 size in black and white (grey scale) –See if any strange patterning occurs.  It happens regularly. –Make sure all of your colours and shading are not made up of different dot patterns, they interact with the dot patterning needed for printing and some rather nasty patterning can appear that was unexpected. • •Finally •You have one page to write general and supporting information about your poster. •This and the poster itself must follow the format and Template supplied from moodle. •There are examples of posters on the wall of the top corridor in N Block. •Check them out •Good luck •