Software to use for creating posters for academic conferences?

Question

And how much time does it usually take? I'd like to create a poster without having to put too much time into formatting.

Answer 1

Powerpoint. There are hundreds of PowerPoint poster templates available online, many of them are good, and it is one of the standard formats people accept — and can be exported to PDF for easy post-conference distribution.

Answer 2

I would recommend Inkscape:

• vector graphics
• powerful
• free
• intuitive
• cross platform

Answer 3

I haven't written a poster yet, but if you're a Latex savvy, there are plenty of packages that allow you to design posters.

See related questions:

• "How to create posters using LaTeX"
• "What can you tell me about poster design and typography in LaTeX?"
• "Conference Announcement Poster"

Answer 4

In general there are a number of different distinct workflows that lead to a poster. Each workflow has a number of software implementations.

• Word Processor (Word, Pages, OpenOffice Writer)
• Presentation Software (e.g., PowerPoint, Keynote, Impress)
• Vector Graphics (e.g., Illustrator, Inkscape, OpenOffice Draw)
• Desktop Publishing (e.g. Publisher, In Design)
• LaTeX

There are advatages/disadvatages to each category and to each piece of software within a category. For making a poster, the differences within a category are much smaller than the differences across categories.

Word processors are probbaly the weakest for layout, but are likely the software you are most familair with. Presentation software is a little stronger on the layout and also something you are likely familiar with. Vector graphic programs are really strong on the layout, but take a lot of fiddling. Most academic work doesn't require extensive use of a vector graphics program, so most people are not familiar. There is little added benefit of learning one. Desktop publishing software is really designed for making posters and other complicated layout (think magazines and brochures). There is almost no reason for most academics to master a desktop publishing software. LaTeX is an "oddball" you can use it for everything and it is well suited for both simple layouts and complicated layouts. The learning curve is pretty steep.

Answer 5

I want to add an additional tool that I always use:

Adobe InDesign

Answer 6

I would like to avoid bringing this question into the subjective situation but I'm personally a fan of Adobe Illustrator as it combines the speed and ease of ppt (but not as quick and dirty) but it provides much more control. If you save the files as *.SVG or *.PS files, you can get really into the details and obtain a WYSIWYG level of detail. Plus, if you're aiming to print your poster, it becomes much easier to switch between RGB and CMYK color.

Answer 7

For completeness, Apple's Pages has quite a few nice poster layouts.

Answer 8

As always, if you are on a mac, you can use the combo omnigraffle + latexit.

Answer 9

Microsoft Publisher is quite easy to use if you're used to work with MS Office already (especially Powerpoint). It helps you with some basic checks, e.g. that images you include have sufficient resolution, you're working in the correct color space, ...

Answer 10

I recommend the free and open-source desktop publishing program Scribus, available for a wide variety of operating systems including Windows, Mac, and Linux. Unlike many of the programs suggested here, Scribus is specifically focused on tasks relevant to poster production: layout, typesetting, and high-quality printed output. For example, Scribus includes a "Preflight verifier" to warn you about potential problems with your exported PDF file before you waste €40 on a messed-up A0 colour print. I've used Scribus for several conference posters and it's always produced good results. These days I personally tend to use LaTeX with the tikzposter package, but I know that some people prefer interactive, WYSIWYG tools for poster design -- and in those cases, Scribus would be my first choice.

Answer 11

I've just used Microsoft Publisher to turn an 8-slide PowerPoint presentation into an A2 poster for a medical conference.

I copied each slide into Publisher and then blew them up to 140% and distributed and aligned them. I added a blue frame, then saved it to PDF for the print shop.

This is probably the best and easiest way to turn an existing PowerPoint presentation into a large poster for professional use.

PowerPoint is very easy to use, but I would recommend using proper publishing software for actual publishing work. PowerPoint gets used too often for things it isn't good at. There's loads of great free and open source (and indeed paid-for/proprietary) software out there - don't limit yourself to trying to do everything with the basic Microsoft Office suite.

(Publisher is also part of Office but it's a proper DTP package.)

Answer 12

For your use case, I'd go with M PowerPoint. I have spent anywhere from 4 to 16 hours on posters, depending on the level of detail.

My progression through poster design software went as follows:

M PowerPoint - easy to use, basic layout a breeze, limited in typographical tools

M Publisher - more layout tools, still easy to use coming from a M Suite background

Illustrator - fully featured vector graphics, more control of print/graphics settings, more layout options, harder to learn (but worth it for stunning posters, IMO)

Latex - tried, but didn't fit my use case very well. I needed more interactive control of design elements and the basic templates looked quite drab.

Future - perhaps InDesign, which may add some typesetting features that Illustrator lacks.

Answer 13

I've used Microsoft Visio to create posters before.

Its original intent is the creation of flowcharts, technical drawings, simple floor plans etc. It's much better at this kind of diagramming than Powerpoint - but offers a bit less "design hand-holding". On the other hand, it's not as bare-bones Inkscape - but allows for less fine-tuned messing with the graphics, or at least makes it more complicated.

Sorry for recommending closed-source software, but - it's also an option.

Answer 14

There are various templates to create poster using markdown*, cf. the list at https://gist.github.com/Pakillo/4854e5d760351206084f6be8abe476b2:

• https://github.com/odeleongt/flexdashboard-poster
• https://github.com/odeleongt/postr
• https://github.com/bbucior/drposter
• https://github.com/mathematicalcoffee/beamerposter-rmarkdown-example
• https://github.com/jhollist/markdownPoster
• https://github.com/BenBarnard/pdfposter

That first template allows to go from a human-readable code like

## Row 2 {data-height=75}

### **Methods**

#### Workflow

**Dependencies**

This poster template dependes on the following R packages

- rmarkdown [@rmarkdown]
- flexdashboard [@flexdashboard]
- webshot [@webshot]

To use `scripts/generic-content.R` you will need a GNU/Linux system
and a working installation of `imagemagick`.

to a poster like

---

* : If you are not familiar with this tool, Markdown is a lightweight markup language that starts to be used everywhere: as you may have noticed, https://academia.stackexchange.com/, https://github.com/, various forum and a large community of software developer has started using it or supporting it to some extend. It is easy to learn and intuitive.

Answer 15

I use a combination of Adobe InDesign and Illustrator. You should use software designed for page layout, not something coopted for that purpose. Please don't use PowerPoint or Latex — PowerPoint is difficult to use with many many objects on a single slide, and really isn't designed for page layout. Latex shouldn't be used by anyone, unless you have so many equations in your document that nothing else will do.

I export figures into .AI or .SVG and use InDesign to lay out the poster. This doesn't take very long, and you can set up styles to ensure consistent formatting across the poster.