Science PowerPoint tips and tutorials

Most students, technicians or scientists usually have some experience in PowerPoint that can be easily utilized to produce poster presentation. No need for using more expensive graphical software packages. All steps are just like making a slide; in this case - a very big slide for printing. If you have all your data already in PowerPoint slides then making the poster is a snap. Just copy each element: table, figure or text, and re-format right on your poster.

Start you poster design with new blank slide in new slide Presentation. In the File pull down menu click Page Setup to activate dialog box. In Slide sized for: pull down menu select Custom at the bottom of the list and set the width and height at 48 and 36 inches, respectively. Set slide orientation at Landscape. To prepare the text use MS Word or any other text editor first and, after making necessary corrections and edition there, copy-paste the text into the PP Text box. To avoid any printing problems later use typical fonts like Arial or Times New Roman. Final text formatting could be subsequently performed using PowerPoint features. Place each text section (Introduction, Methods etc.) or Figure legend in a separate text boxes so you can shuffle them around at will. To make all the final arrangement of poster components you will need to view the poster on your computer screen in its entirety. To do so set the viewing area (zoom) at 20-25%, depending on your monitor size.

Useful hints:

1) For text use the following font sizes:
Title: 72 - 96
Authors/ Institution: 40 - 48
Section headings/Figure legends: 32 - 40
Text: 20 - 28

2) Tables could be made right on the poster using PowerPoint Table editor or copied from the existing slide.

3) Data figures could be converted from Excel as described in Editing Excel charts in PowerPoint. Do not use whole pre-made slides for incorporation into poster. Instead, copy the figure from your older slide as a vector graphics and paste/edit right on poster.

4) Images should be saved at minimum 150 dpi (preferably 300 dpi) before importing into poster. Use Photoshop for this purpose. Remember that the resolution requirement for printing (poster) is higher than for on-screen presentation.

Fig. 34. The general outlay of a poster prepared in PowerPoint.