Dance 270: Dance Anatomy & Kinesiology

If you have never designed a research poster before, it is very easy to do so in Powerpoint or GoogleSlides.

Essentially, your poster is a single giant slide.

Go to File>page setup.

Choose "custom" and set the dimensions of the poster to the size you need. Many academic posters are 48 inches across and 36 inches tall. 40x30 is also a common size, if you want something a bit smaller.

Page setup in PowerPoint:        

Page setup in Google Slides:   

There are many ways to organize your poster.

Traditional Trifold Layout

The traditional poster layout is a tri-fold approach. Here is a very basic poster template with a large central section and two smaller sections on each side. Feel free to use File>Make a copy to add it to your own Google drive for editing.

Note: in this template, the column boxes are outlines created with the Shape tool. They are not text boxes.  You'll need to add text boxes for your words.

Non-Traditional Layout

The strength of the traditional layout is that it encourages you to describe your process from hypothesis to results, so even if someone is by themselves reading the poster, they can tell what's going on.

However, some poster designers prefer a more visually dynamic layout, that emphasizes only the major takeaway from the project. This is especially useful if you are at a conference where you will be standing by your poster and having in-person conversations about your project.  There is no standard layout for this approach. The main things are that the major takeaway is centered on the poster in a large font, and that the poster itself tends to have very minimal text.

If you need help finessing your poster design, just ask for help.

• Karen Olson (your librarian)
• DiSCO staff -- the DiSCO staff also includes several poster design experts; fill out a ticket here and someone will contact you!