Using PowerPoint to Create a Poster Presentation

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Using PowerPoint to Create a Poster Presentation

• Helen Dixon
• Information Services

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What is a Poster Presentation?

• A static, visual medium used to communicate ideas
  and messages
• Can include text, pictures, diagrams and charts
• Often used at conferences or exhibitions to
  present research or to sell products or ideas

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Designing your Poster

• Plan your content
• What is your poster trying to achieve?
• Keep it simple
• Be selective and concise
• Know your audience
• What is their level of knowledge?

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Choosing your Colour Scheme

• Avoid bright, garish colours
• Background and foreground colours should have
  high contrast and complement each other
• Keep to one or two font colours
• 5-8 of men have some form of colour blindness
• Red/Green is most common
• Certain colours can be symbolic
• Can vary in different cultures

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Getting your Message Across

• No more than 2 font types
• Arial or Times New Roman tend to be easy to read
• Titles/headings should be larger than other text
  (40pt)
• DO NOT USE ALL UPPER CASE
• Sentence case is best
• Avoid overuse of bold, italics or underline

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A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

• But only when used appropriately!
• Pictures should complement your colour scheme
• Avoid complicated graphs
• Diagrams should be labelled
• Images captured from web pages tend to be low
  resolution and do not scale well
• Avoid GIFs
• Use .emf, .wmf, .tif, .jpeg, etc.

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Handy Hints!

• Check your spelling!
• Be consistent
• Headings, images, captions, emphasis
• Sections should follow a storyline
• Ask others to review your poster
• Be prepared to answer questions and back up your
  findings

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Practical Exercise

• Using PowerPoint to Create Poster Presentations
• Need to download files