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Poster Design: Tips for Creating a Successful Poster

What is Good? What is Bad?

UWF Librarians have created many posters for conferences. In some ways we followed best practices, and in some ways, we didn't! We have reviewed our own posters in light of what we have learned - in both making this guide and through our experience over the years. So, we decided to critique our own posters in annotations to the right. What do you think?

Evaluate Your Poster

Once you've completed your poster, use the following strategies to evaluate it:

  • Get feedback. Get a pack of post-it notes and ask your friends/family/classmates/coworkers (or even strangers!) to critique your poster. Make yourself scarce so they'll feel comfortable providing honest feedback anonymously.

Below are some UWF posters that librarians have presented in the past, along with their own critiques of what they felt they got right and what they felt they didn't do so well.

Example 1

Good: succinct; tells a story; more graphics than text

Bad: too informal; top border is a little too dark for the title

Example 2

 

Good - White space, colorful images, inclusion of graphical information, easy-to-read font

Bad - Spacing could be improved, too informal?

Example 3

Good: Dark font on light background; tells a story; more graphics than text; large heading; includes conference logo

Bad: too wedded to the cleverness of the newspaper design in that headers could be more informative/clear; charts could be labeled in bigger font, in a clearer way; could include contact info of presenters

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