MRI Resources
Basic Poster Design
Effective posters are well organized and concise, readable and comprehensible. Readability measures how the ideas easily flow from one item to another. Legibility or comprehensibility pertains to the sensible texts. While the conciseness refers to the attention created by posters for their targeted audiences and because of this posters were created to have a prominent and brief punch line that will grab your audience attention.
Many posters suffer from easy-to-fix problems that make them ineffective, including:
- objective and/or main point too hard to find
- text too small
- poor use of graphics
- poor organization/structure
Are Your Posters Effective?
- Are your posters attracting audiences? Or, are they examined only by your most avid competitors or admirers?
- Do others merely glance at your poster, then cross their eyes and hurry past?
- Do those that do examine your poster look at it in obvious puzzlement?
- Does your poster fail to evoke thoughtful questions or interest?
Creating an effective poster requires combining planning, art, design, science and attention to detail. To facilitate this, MRI provides the following information (by topic):
- Planning - before starting your poster; clarify the message (objective/main point), audience, budget, and deadline
- Focus - stick to your primary message, and keep it simple
- Layout - facilitate the reader's understanding of your poster's message
- Headings - utilize headers to orient readers, help them move through your content, and convey major points
- Graphics - graphics should always be clear and dominant in a poster
- Visual Grammar - posters depend on graphics and layout to effectively communicate rather than text
- Text - text should always be minimized - let the graphics carry the workload
- Colors - color can make a poster more attractive and legible, but the can also cause a plethora of problems
- Editing - edit ruthlessly, the most common mistake in poster design is too much text
Disclaimer: This information is intended to help poster designers/presenters avoid common problems that will obscure their messages. Nothing discussed here will make up for poor content.
