Designing an Effective Poster
DESN 1550 NATURAL HISTORY FIELD STUDIES
Major Assignment: Marine Rock Platform
Week 7
Overview : Study of the marine rock platform consists of field sketches, photographs, specimen collection (where appropriate) of plants and animals associated with the coastal environment. The Merewether rock platform is an ideal location for studying the intertidal zone and the creatures that live in the various niches of this extreme environment. The constant pounding of the ocean waves necessitates a variety of attachment techniques for many animals, the shells of those that succumb to the tides and other predators can be found littering the seashore.
ASSIGNMENT PROJECT 2:
Over the next six weeks you are to research the library and web for information on the intertidal zone. Become familiar with the animals that inhabit this area, there are several books on the subject in the University library. Design an A3 poster to illustrate the intertidal environment and its animals and/or plants.
The poster is to be at a level of completion suitable for assessment by an organization to show your ability to pull together information, words and illustrations as a pilot for a completed work.
You may choose from the following media to create your mock-up.
1. pen and ink
2. graphite pencils
3. coloured pencils
4. pastels
5. Markers
6. Watercolour
7. Acrylic
8. Computer designed and printed
The mock-up poster will be assessed in class in week 7. Please bring your project work to class each week, as we will be developing techniques during the life of this project.
Resources
The following websites are some resources that you may wish to consult as you design your poster. For your project remember that you only need to design it to be A3 in size. You may wish to type "Poster Design" into Google and see if you can find other useful resources that can help you with this project.
Things to think about are:
1. The Heading?
2. How many columns?
3. Who is the audience? What is their educational level?
4. After the audience has looked at your poster, what would you want them to do, or be able to do?
5. How many things (objects) are you going to talk about? (number of species)
Remember that the aim of all designed materials is to tell a coherent story, with a beginning (an introductory sentence or paragraph), a middle (the information bit) and an end, (summary). You may also include suggestions for action.
6. How many illustrations are you going to use, and where will they be placed?
7. How much text will you use? What level of difficulty will the text be at?
8. How does the whole poster come together so that the parts placed together make a pleasant-looking and inviting whole?
My suggestion is that before you start your poster design, write down the answers to the above questions and this will strongly guide you in your poster-design process.
You may create a number of rough preliminary designs (which I want to see) before you settle upon a design that you will work up into your completed poster.
If you can desktop publish, please do so. If you can't then do your best to create an effective poster using whatever methods and media that you feel comfortable in using. All of the images should be illustrations, not photographs. In this course photographs are a resource to be used to create your illustrations.
On the Project Assessment date in week 7, bring in all your workbooks containing all of the drawings and artwork that you have created on your field trips. These fieldwork sketches will also be part of your assesment mark.
On the back of the poster, write down References to your source materials and research.
Effective Poster Design:
George Cree’s Anthology of Tips for Posters:
http://web.uvic.ca/psyc/lindsay/teaching/577/georgecreepostertips.pdf
University of Guelph Teaching Support Services
http://www.soe.uoguelph.ca/webfiles/agalvez/poster/
Although this website uses Corel Draw, the principles can be applied to Adobe Photoshop or Adobe InDesign.
Poster Design Tips:
London School of Economics and Political Science
CLT Centre for Learning Technology
http://clt.lse.ac.uk/workshops-and-courses/Course-resources/Poster-Design-Tips.php
Using Microsoft Powerpoint or Microsoft Word to design posters
About.com: Desktop Publishing:
Poster & Fliers - Poster Design Tutorials and Examples
http://desktoppub.about.com/od/posters/Posters_and_Fliers_Poster_Design_Tutorials_and_Examples.htm
University Poster Presentation Design:
Designing a Scientific Poster:
University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.
Chemical Engineering and Advanced materials
http://lorien.ncl.ac.uk/ming/Dept/Tips/present/posters.htm#preamble
Poster Design Guide: Scientific
The Cain Project in Engineering and Professional Communication
Rice University
http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~cainproj/designing.html
compiled by Keith Davey13th September 2010 for DESN1550
contact me at: keith.davey@newcastle.edu.au