Making Posters in LaTeX

This page gives information on making a poster. It’s not just for economists/econometricians, but it does seem that physical science researchers do this a lot more than social scientists, and hence know what they’re doing somewhat more. If you want any idea of just how common poster presentations are, take a look at the Google Images results for “poster presentations”.

This is a guide for making a poster in LaTeX, the typesetting software, it must be emphasised. If you are a user of LaTeX then it is quite straightforward to make a poster: simply copy and paste your paper into a poster tex file, condense the language and bit (get rid of “the”’s and “a”’s, go for bullet points etc) to make sure it fits in the columns, and your poster is ready. However, to be able to compile a poster tex file, a few additional initial steps must be taken, which will now be outlined...

Firstly, download the a0poster package, which you can find here. Or if you want it in a winzip format (with a few of my random files thrown in), click here. The example you can go from in the second (winzip) link is a poster I created for a conference in Birmingham in 2012 (tex file here and poster here). Simply download the contents of the zip file from either location and put them either in the same folder as the tex file you want to compile, or in some other location that your LaTeX package can find. I find the first strategy simplest, if less convenient (you'll need to have repeat copies in multiple locations if you do many posters).

A look at the example tex file will show you that all you need to do is put your normal tex content inside three separate \col{} commands (for three columns), and compile. However, be careful about putting spare lines at the end of the \col{} command, and between \col{} commands, as for some reason that seems to push the third column onto a second poster.

Things you might want to change:

• The address for correspondence: go to the style file (a0poster.sty) and change lines 104-109 to what you desire.
• The university/department/organisation crest: go to the style file and change line 82 to the file name you want, and make sure the crest graphic file is in the same folder.
• Anything else: The style file can be amended, and the one that is in the same folder as your tex file will be acted upon, hence you can make other changes dependent on how confident you are using LaTeX.

Printing a Poster

Printing a poster is not necessarily straightforward, since most printers don't print A0 size. It is likely that your university had a printing department that can be used to print.

You may be offered the option of having your printout laminated; it is worth taking this option as it ensures your poster will be more durable.