The Title

This part of the poster includes the title of the work, the authors’ names, the institutional affiliations, and the poster number.

Title of the work

Your title should reveal your conclusion, not simply describe what you’ve done. Use “Treatment A Better than Treatment B” instead of “An Evaluation of Treatments A and B”.

Use a simple, easy to read font. A sans serif style, such as Helvetica or Arial, is ideal.

Think BIG! Really Big!

The title should be readable from a distance of 5-7 meters. Your title will attract viewers closer to see your imaginative and exciting study. The letters should be about 1.5 – 2 inches tall. That is about a 96 point size (or 48 points enlarged by 200% when printed.

There are seldom rules regarding line justification of the title. Determine if you will left or center justify the text of the title banner once it has been formatted, based upon personal preferences and space constraints.

Refer to your meeting guidelines for more details specific to the meeting you plan to attend.

If your title is no more than one line long, you can use all capitals, “TITLE”. If your title is more than one line long, capitalize only the first letter, “Title”. A title that is more than one line long is difficult to read if all text is capitalized. Use boldface.

Authors’ names

Use first and last names, especially if you will be standing by your poster, to make it easier for attendees to talk with you. You rarely need to include your middle initial or title; include these on your handout, if you believe that they must be written somewhere.

Titles (Ph.D., M.D.) are usually omitted, although the meeting organizers may require that the presenting author, student authors, or society members be indicated. Use boldface and mixed upper/lower case for the authors names.

Authors’ affiliations

Try to group author’s names and affiliations, so that attendees can easily identify who comes from where.
City and state names can be dropped from the institutional affiliations. Your complete mailing address, including telephone, fax, e-mail and web-site addresses should be included on your handout.

Affiliations can be even smaller, at about 36 – 48 points (0.5 – 0.75 inch). Use plain text, no boldface, and mixed upper/lower case for affiliations.

Poster number

Use boldface for the poster session number (the number you are assigned by the organizing committee). The poster session number should be printed separately, at about 96 point size. It typically is placed in the top of the title banner, to the left, right, or at the center.