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Scientific Poster Creation

A guide to support Peoria Medical Students, Residents, and Faculty make effective scientific posters.

Creating Effective Scientific Posters

Advice for Creating Your Poster

Finding Images & Logos

Editing Templates in PowerPoint

Choose a PowerPoint template that you like.

Save this template on your local machine or a thumb drive.

PowerPoint Editing Tips:

Editing Content:

-Click in the text box

-Simply highlight the existing text and type over it with your content

-Resize boxes by clicking on the box and placing your cursor over a corner mark; ‘click and drag’ the box to the proper size

-Move boxes by clicking on the box and placing your cursor over the box until you see a four-way arrow; then ‘click and drag’ the box

Changing Fonts:

-Click in the text box & highlight the text to be changed

-Click on the Home tab

-Select your font style from the list (remember that Sans serif fonts work best for titles and headers)

-Select your font size from the list (remember that bigger is usually easier to read)

-Choose font options like bold or colors (remember italics and underlining are harder to read and sometimes confusing)

Removing/Adding Extra Text Boxes:

-Click on the text box (you will see a dashed outline)

-Click on the dashed line until it becomes solid

-To remove - Use either the Cut or Delete function to remove the box (you may need to repeat this to remove the header box too)

-To add – Use the Copy function; then click outside of the box and use Paste; move the new box and edit the content

Inserting Visual Elements:

-Know where your image, chart, etc. has been saved

-Insert visual elements by using the Insert tab

-Use large-format images to not lose image quality when printing - example: include .png files