So you have to design a poster...?
Introductions: Who am i?
Dr. Dalyn Luedtke
Research/Teaching Interests:
-
Visual/ Spatial Rhetoric
- Multimodal Pedagogy
-
Digital Writing
- Television
- Popular Culture
- Genre Studies
- Food Politics and Culture
WHO ARE YOU?
Why present your research as a poster?
-
Greater Interaction
- One-on-One Conversation
- Networking
- Visibility
- Reach
- Visual Nature
- Feedback
- Work In Progress (WIP)
Context
(A)udience, (P)urpose, and (D)esign
Purpose= Why?
Audience= Who?
Design = How?
Audience
- Who is your audience? (specialists, non-specialists, colleagues, etc.)
- How knowledgable is your audience? (background, history, key terms)
- What do they expect? (qualitative vs. quantitative)
Purpose
Overall Purpose: Use text, images, and graphics to highlight the results or goals of your project to a large group in a way that is accessible and interesting.
Typical organization used to do so:
Design
DO:
- Keep it simple (amount of text, font choices, formatting)
- Make it readable (Title size, heading size, bullets)
- Make it interesting (images with captions, graphs)
- Explain/label all figures and graphs
- Stick to a design theme
- Use contrasting, complementary colors
- Remember: contrast, repetition, alignment, proximity
DON'T:
- Use a dark background
- Use low-resolution images
- Include an abstract
- Rely on HUGE blocks of text
An Example
https://www.flickr.com/photos/43563288@N07/4860616384/in/pool-pimpmyposter/
What do you think works? What doesn't?
Resources
As you begin your poster design, use the resources at your disposal:
- Do an image search for posters in your field for both inspiration and as examples of what not to do.
- Visit "Pimp My Poster" to see real-life examples and feedback--or get feedback on your own.
- Check out Colin Purrington and Fred Stoss' online "How To" guides for more extensive instructions.
A Word of Caution: There are many template online that you may use. Most of them are not well-designed; furthermore, the very nature of templates is to standardize rather than emphasize.
Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or would like to discuss visual rhetoric and poster design in more detail:
dalyn@norwich.edu
So you have to design a poster...?
By Dalyn Luedtke
