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Academic Research Poster Design

Show off your research with an accessible, well-designed poster. These tips are useful for poster sessions at conferences, in classes, and other academic settings.

Find a Template

The Digital Resource Center (DRC) poster printers are 42 inches wide, therefore one of the dimensions of any poster must be 42 inches or less.

These PowerPoint templates are sized for printing in the DRC:

Don't want to use PowerPoint? You can also use and find templates for these design tools:

  • Canva

  • Google Slides

  • Adobe Illustrator

  • Adobe Express

  • Adobe InDesign

  • LaTeX

File Creation

  1. Go to www.canva.com and log into or create your account
  2. Select "Custom Size," enter your poster measurements, make sure the units are set to "inches," and create your poster
  3. You can browse templates, but make sure that if you do use one, it conforms to your specifications or you can adjust it
  4. Start designing!
  1. Go to slides.google.com
  2. Select "Blank Presentation" to make a new file
  3. Go to File > Page Setup > Custom and enter your dimensions
  4. Start designing!

Websites like SlidesGo and PosterPresentations.com can be a good resource for templates, but be sure it conforms to your specifications or you adjust it

Make Your Text Readable

Font size, color, and spacing can affect how easy or difficult your poster is to read.

✓ Use easily readable font sizes: bigger is better. People will likely read your poster from 5 feet away or more. Sample text sizes:

  • Title: 110-160pt.

  • Large headings: 60–54pt.

  • Smaller headings: 40–50pt.

  • Paragraph text: 32–36pt.

  • Photo captions: 25–28pt.

  • Bibliography: 16–22pt.

✓ Don’t forget about text in diagrams and graphs!

✓ Don’t put text over images.

✓ Avoid large blocks of dark color.

✓ The contrast on the computer screen is better than on the poster, so err on the side of visibility. (i.e. don’t put black text on a bright blue background).

✓ Poster boards in Olin-Rice are designed for 42×42 posters, if yours exceeds this size it will overhang the board and could cause space issues.

Design Your Poster

Sans-serif for titles and headings, especially, but possibly for the whole poster.

  • Arial

  • Calibri

  • Helvetica

  • Verdana

  • Tahoma

For more resources on choosing fonts, check out Google Fonts.

You can use a serif font for paragraph text or bulleted items, if you’d like…

Try to use 2 fonts or fewer for the sake of consistency!

Use colors wisely, they can help make your poster more readable and attractive. 

The WebAIM Color Contrast Checker tells you whether the colors you've chosen will be readable