DESIGNING A POSTER A SHORT GUIDE FROM THE JET LIBRARY

Transcription

1 DESIGNING A POSTER A SHORT GUIDE FROM THE JET LIBRARY

2 The main thing to remember about posters is that they are a visual medium so how they look is as, if not more, important than the text you put on them. Think about your topic is there something in the subject or title that conjures up a visual image? If you re poster is about work streams for instance that could lend itself to a background or a picture of a mountain stream. Posters about the maternity department should feature a smiling baby, while ones about end-of-life care might choose candles, lilies and a muted palate of greys. Don t be too literal though if you work in bowel screening try and avoid the obvious images and too much brown! Layout There is a template on the JET Library expo page which you can download. Posters for the Expo and for certain events at Leighton need to be in portrait to fit on the display stands but if you don t hear anything definite one way or another you can choose. My preference is for landscape. You can change the layout of your poster in Powerpoint by clicking on the Design tab at the top of the screen. Then click on the Slide Size tab at the top right-hand corner of the screen.

3 Then click on Custom Slide Size. Under Orientation you can select Portrait or Landscape Pictures and Images There are various free photo web sites on the internet but in practice Google Images searches across them all. Go to Google and do a search for your topic. On the search results screen click on Images. On the screen full of pictures click on Tools On the menu that now drops down click on Usage rights

4 When a box pops up click on Labeled for reuse This will give you a range of images that you can use without worrying about licensing or copyright. You can use photos or pictures as either self-contained images on your poster or as a background to the whole thing. If you choose to use a photo as a background make sure you choose something with a pattern but not too many specific objects on it. For instance a field of wheat might be OK as a background but a portrait of Henry VIII might not be as people will spend more time trying to work out what it is behind your text than they will do reading the information on the poster. To use a picture as a background right click anywhere on your slide and the click on Format Background. On the Format Background menu on the right-hand side of the screen select Picture or texture fill The screen will go a funny colour but don t worry about this. Go back to the Format Background menu and under Insert picture from click on File

5 Browse through the images in your pictures folder (or wherever else you ve saved them) and double click on it to use it as your background. If you are using an image as a background you don t need to worry where to put it it will just underlie your text boxes when you add them. If you are using a picture as a self-contained image you might want to wait until you have added the text to your poster before you decide where to put it. In this case just save your image to a safe folder and cross that bridge when you come to it. Things to steer clear of include: Clip Art Pictures of MSWord documents Dogs and Pigs (can be offensive to Muslims) Too many logos Adding text to your poster Before you start to add text it s worth thinking deeply about what you need to put on to your poster and what can be dispensed with. You ll need enough text to convey the information but no more. Most improvement projects fit into a framework of: The Background any information you need to set the scene The Problem what was the problem you were trying to tackle? What we did what measures did you take to improve things? The Results what changed because of what you did? The Future what you plan to do next on the basis of the above

6 For each section try and stick to specific points rather than vague generalities and aim for no more than six bullet points for each. Choosing a font Calibri is the default font on PowerPoint. It s not bad in itself but it s not great either and not changing it suggests you either didn t know how too or couldn t be bothered to change it. Fonts fall into two main categories depending on whether they have serifs (the little sticky out bits at the top and bottom of letters) or not. A serif P P Generally speaking for most documents longer than half a page or so serif fonts are better but for short bits of text (i.e. posters) fonts without serifs (sans-serif) are better. Some nice sans-serif fonts you could use include Candara Century Gothic Cooper Black Eras Demit ITC Euphemia Franklin Gothic Book Gill Sans MT Gisha Maiandra GD Segoe UI Verdana Arial is an abomination so unless you want your audience to lose the will to live try and avoid it if possible. NEVER underline text in a poster it looks dreadful and makes you look like a blackmailer/kidnapper. If you want to emphasise something put text in bold or a bigger font size. And NEVER use more than two fonts on a poster otherwise you will fall victim to ransom-note syndrome!

7 Adding a text box You can add a text box by clicking on the Insert tab and then clicking on Text Box To change the colour of your text box right click inside it and then click on Format Shape. On the Format Shape menu click on Solid fill. You can then choose a colour for your text box the Eyedropper feature allows you to select a colour from your background and use that to colour your text box. You can also click on Line under the Format Shape menu to choose a different colour outline for your text box.

8 You can colour your text boxes to tone in with the theme of your poster. It s best to choose pastel colours although for a topic that doesn t suggest too many images text in boxes with a Mondrian-style outline on a white background can add interest and colour. Be self-disciplined though and restrict yourself to two or three different colours. Be aware that you might need to change the colour of your font so that is shows up better against the colour of the text box. For some colours white font on a darker background can work better than black font. PowerPoint text boxes are all rectangular with right angles at the corners (as rectangles tend to have, to be fair). This can look a bit, well square, but you can add a few curves to your text boxes by inserting curved-cornered rectangles To do this go to the Insert menu and click on Shapes Select the curved-cornered rectangle (it s the second shape along under Rectangles). Drag the corners of the rectangle so that it covers your text box. At first the shape will overlie the text box but you can send it to the background so the text sits on top of it. To do this right click on the rectangle then click on Send to Back You can change the size of your text boxes by clicking on their corners and dragging and you can drag and drop them to wherever looks best. Sometimes it makes life easier to drag a text box out of the poster completely while you do some editing you won t lose it and you can drag it back into the poster any time you want to.