Poster Session

Saturday, Nov. 19

3:30-4:30 pm

Mudd 171 (NOTE LOCATION CHANGE), with treats and drinks

Poster Preparation Tips

Your poster should be an organized presentation of your final project. I suggest the following template for your poster. Use your visual skills and creativity to define the layout. Have fun with this!

• Title, Author List, Carleton College
• Introduction
• Subsection headings of your choice (depends on project and your focus)
• Conclusions, or Looking Ahead, or Questions, or Future Concerns (whatever seems appropriate)
• Works Cited (follow this advice carefully)
• Acknowledgments (of people who helped you)

Other things to keep in mind:

• Say as much as you can with pictures/schematics/figures/plots; avoid a poster full of words only.
• The text on your poster should be large and easily read by someone standing up to four feet away. Therefore, the fonts used on the text portions of your poster should be no smaller than 24 point.
• You can find a nice model for a poster in Dana's poster on abrupt climate change. Please take a look! You can find many other good student posters in the hallways in Olin and Mudd Halls.

Poster Making & Printing

Your poster will be printed for you at the college on the large-format printer available at Printing and Mailing Services. The Chemistry Department will pay for the printing fee. The poster should be designed using Powerpoint (or Adobe Illustrator, if you already know how to use it). This software is available on all public computers on campus.

• POSTER MAKING GUIDE from Doug Foxgrover: Click here for general info.
• POSTER SIZE: Set up a document that is 36" high and 48" wide (these exact dimensions are important!). Use the PowerPoint tools to lay out the information you want to include in the poster.
• SAVE as PDF: When you are done with your poster, save it as an Adobe Acrobat file (*.pdf) using the "PRINT" command. Select in the printer name list "Adobe PDF". SAVE locally to the SCRATCH DISC often, as you work. When you are done with a session or with your poster, COPY it to a safe place on the network (in our Course COMMON folder is fine). Check this file carefully; make sure all the graphics are intact (and not too pixelated) and things look as they should!
• PRINTING ADVICE: Large format printing is expensive, so plan to print only one copy of your poster. It is also important to get your poster completed early, so that it can be printed in time. There is likely to be a rush of posters being printed for the poster session. It's a good idea to print smaller versions as drafts for editing.
• PDF FILE SIZE LIMITS at 15 Mb. You must keep your file size under 15MB in order to submit your poster online for printing. If your file size exceeds 15 Mb, you will need to walk your poster over to Printing and Mailing Services (basement of Leighton Hall) by early Friday morning, Nov. 18. You can use a jump drive to transfer the file to them. They open about 7:15 am in the morning.
• SUBMITTING YOUR PRINT JOB ONLINE: You will need to submit your poster online by Thursday night, Nov. 17 at the latest so printing can be done on Friday. When you are ready to print a copy of your poster, you should click here to start submission of your print job online. Then, click on "Print Job Submission Form". Fill out the form with answers as noted below:
  • User: Your name
  • Department: Chemistry
  • Budget Number: Chemistry
  • Extension to call when job is finished: your phone number
  • Date needed: noon Friday Nov. 18
  • Length of document (inches): 36"
  • Width of document (inches):48"
  • Number of copies: 1
  • Printer: Large format plotter
  • Special instructions: none
  • File to print: Select your pdf poster file.
  • Then push the SUBMIT button.
• POSTER PICKUP. Remember to pick up your poster at Printing and Mailing Services (basement of Leighton Hall) by Friday afternoon Nov. 18 (they close at 5pm).

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