TC: Birgit Lukowski: Designing Effective Academic Posters

As a major aspect of academic publishing, posters are an integral part of almost every scientific conference. Their purpose is to highlight and visualize research results as effectively as possible and invite discussion.

In this workshop, participants learn how to conceive and develop a clearly structured poster in order to attract the attention of their target audience. They will also learn the importance of moving away from densely-packed, high word count formats still so common today. 

Specially tailored to the requirements of scientific presentations, the workshop conveys a basic knowledge of design and layout techniques, e.g. text formatting for better readability, optimizing images and graphs,handling of proportion / composition and using layout grids and templates.

Participants acquire important skills how to present their research work visually well organized, attractive, eye-catching and focused on its most relevant items, and will have the opportunity to put directly into practice what they have learned.

Content:

• "medium poster" – the visual tool to present and promote research work

• pre-considerations concerning target group, objective and intended impact

• pre-structuring the academic poster content, preparing text and images

• handling of corporate design elements

• design basic: typography, colour, proportional balance, visualization

• setting up poster templates

• professional layout practice: designing with grid and columns

• production settings: optimizing printing quality and printing pdf files

Workshop language: English

Please:

To profit the most from this workshop, participants are required to bring individual material (text, images, graphs etc.) of their current research work or recently designed posters, as well as their laptops and PowerPoint.

// Dipl. Des. Birgit Lukowski

Birgit Lukowski is a communication designer and lecturer for presentation technique in Berlin. Based upon her extensive teaching experience in various academic contexts she conceptualized a practice-oriented workshop programme specially tailored to the needs of graduates and early career scientists. The workshop "Designing Effective Academic Posters" focusses on the practical and effective training of design and presentation skills for academic content. Since 2008 the seminar is being offered at numerous graduate academies across Germany and enjoys increasing popularity.