Guidelines for SI Doctoral Poster Session

1. The posters should be mounted on a foam core base (or any sturdy material) measuring approximately 20x30 inches or 33” x 47” as per the CHI poster requirements. This is large enough to arrange four 8.5x11 inch pages or images. The poster printer at the Media Union prints on 36” paper.
   
2. Posters may describe completed research or work that is underway. They may represent the student's dissertation work or other research separate from the dissertation. They may be about any aspect of the student's research, proposal, theoretical framework, methodology, findings, etc.
3. Participants may use laptops to supplement their poster presentations, but laptops are not required nor should they be considered as a substitute for a poster. Participants who choose to bring laptops should be aware that SI may not be able to provide technical support or live Internet connections.

Poster Preparation Tips and Examples

ICOS Poster preparation tips

UIST Poster Example Gallery

Creating Effective Poster Presentations

Advice on Designing Scientific Posters

Flickr pool "Poster sessions"

PhD Posters gallery

Software for Making Posters

Most people use either PowerPoint, Visio, or Illustrator to make posters. Illustrator has a pretty steep learning curve, so if you don't know it already and you're making a poster at the last minute, you might not want to use it.

PowerPoint can be coaxed into making poster-size output by changing the dimensions of the "slide" that you're working on to the size you want your poster to be. Example PPT poster template

Visio is pretty easy to learn and use, is more flexible than PowerPoint, and is a lot less buggy. However, it only runs under Windows.

Poster Printing on Campus

Printing at TCAUP Media Center

GroundWorks Poster Shop

Angell Hall Poster Printer - not glossy, $8.50/linear foot bills to your student account

Poster Printing at Kinko's

There are a couple of Kinko's locations in Ann Arbor. It is a lot more expensive to print a poster at Kinko's than on campus; however, they have more options on the type of paper, they are open 24 hours, and if for some reason the printing gets messed up and it is their fault, they'll print it again until you're happy with it. For the PhD poster session it is probably not worth the extra expense, but if you're presenting a poster at a conference, it is definitely worth it. It also counts as a "research expense" so if you're on a grant or have money in your incentive account, you can pay for it that way.