Overall dimensions of your poster may not exceed 30 inches by 40 inches. Size requirements must be adhered to in order to display 24-25 posters while keeping walkways open, as required by Capitol regulations. Easels will be provided. You will need to provide ALL other materials to set up your poster (clips, tape, pins, etc). Please note there will be NO electrical power for your display.

Each poster should have a header that is visible from a distance. The header should contain the title of the project, your name, the name of your faculty mentor and any collaborators, your academic department, and university.

In general, keep your display "visual," using graphics and photos. Keep text to a minimum. It is unlikely that individuals attending the poster session will read a lengthy presentation.

We recommend having your poster printed on foam core, or, have your poster printed on to paper and then attach it to foam core.

Construction Tips (consult your faculty advisor):

• Do not simply post your research paper to the poster.
• Think in bullets rather than dense sentences or paragraphs.
• Make sure that you have a sharp contrast between the background color and the text color for readability purposes.
• Cut, cut, cut, cut; less is more.
• Left justify; do not full justify (like a newspaper column) as it's hard to read.
• Make certain all spacing between headers and text is the same and that you have the same-size border on all sides (and that you have at least a ½-inch border).
• Limit yourself to two types of fonts and choose basic, not fancy, fonts. You might use one font on the title and the subject headings and another for text. Or you might choose to use the same font throughout. Arial is a good choice. Use sans serif fonts; they're easier to read.
• Capitalization and underlining are generally hard to read; make text bolder or change colors instead.
• Put your headings in a different color than the text so as to make them stand out.
• When printed, large graphics/pictures are not as clear as when small; pick high-resolution graphics and photos. Pick the largest image and then shrink it. This improves resolution. Never increase the size of an image because when printed it becomes fuzzy. Also, if you can take a photo of the item, object, or person with a moderate-to-good-quality digital camera, the resolution will be superior to anything from the web.
• Making a quality poster takes three times as long as you anticipate.
• Spell check and proofread and have five other people proofread too.

Helpful websites

• This is the jackpot of all websites as it operates like an annotated bibliography (brief descriptions) of many of the top poster-making web sites; start here and you can find all the others.
• Students typically find this U of M website user-friendly and packed with useful advice: 
• You might want to use several image search sites, e.g. Google images, to help you locate appropriate graphic images or photographs or  other graphics (illustrations, photographs, computer drawings, etc.), which you can view online, print out, or save to your PC or disk. Just enter the topic, concept, or object for which you are seeking.
• AltaVista's image site provides a more dynamic search capability and advanced search features for making more specific inquiries about the images you ware looking for.