Making an academic research poster using Power Point

This is a screenshot video with audio tutorial on how to make an academic research poster using power point. The tutorial is produced by the Mathematics and Science Teaching (MAST) Institute at the University of Northern Colorado. The templates can be found at http://www.unco.edu/mast/PosterPrinting/poster_printing.html

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Closed Caption:

hello if you're trying to make a
professional poster using PowerPoint
you've come to the right place
i'm gerry Overmyer the outreach
coordinator for the mast Institute at
the University of Northern Colorado
first thing I like to do in making a
powerpoint poster is getting a template
now you can get a template use any
template you'd like but one that works
well we have available at the mast
website at mast . unco de tu / forms and
then download the PowerPoint program
powerpoint poster template so here's the
template that you've just downloaded now
if you want to take a look at the size
you can go to design and go to page
setup and you'll see that this is 56
inches wide and 36 inches high
if you want to print from the mast
Institute most printers ours included
have a height of thirty six inches so
that has to stay constant with the 56 is
pretty standard anywhere from forty
eight inches - 60 inches is pretty
standard one thing that's nice
when you're doing this is if you go to
view to turn on these gridlines that way
it'll help you line up anything on your
poster
one thing I recommend for creating your
poster is to have all of your texts in a
separate word file word and powerpoint
seemed to work pretty good together
so I'm going to go to a paper i did a
few years back and for example
now all i need to do to create the title
of my poster is to cut the title out of
my paper hit control C and then go back
to the poster and now it's kind of hard
to work with when it zoomed out this far
so I'm going to go to view and go to
zoom and a good way to view it is
probably about thirty three percent
anything bigger than that and you'll
just be seen a tiny slice of the poster
so if you hit thirty three percent now
you see you can see the poster pretty
well so what I'm going to do is I'm
going to select the text box of where my
title is and i'm just going to select
over this title
go on and then just hit control V and
boom it puts in my title and then i can
go ahead and center it or change the
font or get it to look however I want
so for example to Center it you can just
go back to home and you hit this little
paragraph button right here and it
centers it for you
and so then for example you can put in
your name right here
type in your department feel free to
change the fonts to give your poster
little uniqueness
now what I like to do is instead of
retyping i'll just go back to my word
file and I mean obviously you'll have to
edit this but just go ahead and cut and
paste some portions of your paper
control C go back to your poster and
select the box and then just select the
text and hit control V and boom it puts
in your text and then obviously you
might need to resize it or change the
font
one thing to notice on your poster is to
kinda keep an idea of what the font
sizes are notice if i click here on my
title this font - sighs 96 and these
secondary titles for example my name is
a font size of 58 down here in my
regular text font size of 28 is normal
down here this font size is 26
so you really don't want to use anything
smaller than a font size of 26 you want
to keep in mind that you want people to
be able to just get a general idea of
what your research is from the poster
try not to get too wordy on the poster
now the next thing i want to show is how
to insert photos
so to insert a photo
what i would do is well first of all any
photo taken from a digital camera should
be fine now if you want to get images
off the internet however you need to
make sure that you save them by right
clicking on them and they need to be at
least 50 K in size so i'm going to go up
to insert and see what i have here so
i'm going to go insert picture and
here's some of my pictures
I think I my desktop I have what I want
here
and so I have some especially for the
poster
ok here's a picture i took of myself for
a while that's a really great picture
but as you can see the size is 641 k so
that's fine
so i'll select that hit insert and
obviously that picture is way too big
so I'm going to go back to view go to
fit to window and we see ok there's my
picture obviously don't want it that big
and so you just shrink it down to the
size you want and then you can just drag
it around and put it in your poster
wherever you want
ok now it's you can always make pictures
smaller but it's usually not a good idea
to make them bigger because they may
become pix elated when you go to print
so let's try another one so insert
picture
let's see here's a picture
jpg image size a hundred and forty-six
so the size is ok this is something I
got off the internet and so will just
insert that
and again you just put it in your poster
wherever you want
ok now finally one thing you may want to
add your poster is actual University of
Northern Colorado logos
so if you do that go to this website www
. Cody edu / publications and then go
down to university logos and actually
download the logos
this will look much better than if you
just want to cut and paste logos off the
University site now jpegs work best so
let's uh let's grab a primary logo in
blue
so we just click there and then it
appears here and so now we just
right-click save picture as and then put
it wherever you want
i'm going to put it in my
a little poster folder
unc logo blue hit save and then if I go
back to my poster
I just go to insert a picture and hey
there it is unc logo blue hit insert
where to go
oh it's tiny but we can make it bigger
and then you can put it wherever you
want or whatever you feel is appropriate
in your poster
now one final thing
all right well that covers all the
basics of making a poster
obviously you know it's going to be a
lot of cutting and pasting a lot of just
moving things around making them look
good making sure things are lined up
you'll probably get frustrated at some
point please do not take it out on your
computer
physically you can take it out verbally
on your computer of course arm and then
finally if you want to print and you are
on near University of Northern Colorado
or involved with us simply go back to
the forum site and print out a poster
request and that will have all the
information you needed to get your
poster created
if you have any questions
well I hope you found this tutorial
somewhat helpful
I'm pleased if you have questions
contact either myself Jerry Overmyer at
Cody edu or Lori ball a ton cote d you
have a good one