How to create posters using LaTeX

Question

I want to create posters for my poster presentation on a conference. What tools or LaTeX classes are available for preparing posters ?

Answer 1

The beamerposter package is quite nice.

Answer 2

baposter is a LaTeX class designed for posters.

Look at the example file included in the class' zip file and you will probably find your way.

A few quick tips :

• You can position boxes by giving them names with name=abc and positioning other boxes using below=abc
• You can set the total number of columns in the document by giving "columns=X" parameter in the \begin{poster} parameters.

Answer 3

Elena Botoeva has written a new package for creating posters with TikZ, called fancytikzposter. There are already five templates with different node shapes and colors.

Sample:

Answer 4

Previously, I wasted a lot of time trying to get sufficiently large paper sizes, sufficiently large fonts, etc. And even when I was successful, I had difficulties with PDF previewers that e.g. waste ridiculous amounts of memory if you open an A0 document. Finally I realised that I can simply create my poster in A4 size. Then you just ask that it's printed in A0 size (a single click in Adobe Reader printing dialog; in most cases, even your local university press can do it). You can easily preview your poster by simply printing it on an A4 printer.

I usually use 8pt fonts (\footnotesize) in my A4 posters. It translates to 32pt fonts when scaled to A0, which seems to be a suitable size for a typical conference poster. Nowadays I'm simply using the article class and settings such as

\pagestyle{empty}
\setlength{\parindent}{0pt}
\raggedright

You can use the textpos package to place "text boxes" using absolute coordinates. Other useful packages include color, titlesec, enumitem, and psnfss.

For very large fonts (e.g. poster title), you can use something like \fontsize{26}{30}\selectfont – alternatively, you can use the \scalebox command. For layout tweaks: \hspace, \vspace, \makebox, \parbox, \raisebox. For drawing lines and boxes: \rule.

Answer 5

I have some advice on this topic elsewhere, which includes pointers to other resources: Using LaTeX to produce conference posters

Myself, I think that the most useful package for a task like this is the textpos package (disclaimer: I wrote that, as a spinoff from the task of laying out posters).

Answer 6

There is also the umbcposter package (similar to baposter). You can download it from: math.umbc.edu/~rouben/umbcposter

The site also provides a good on-line users' guide, as well as a sample poster to get started and a gallery of posters that have used the package.

Here is part of the sample poster provided:

% sample.tex % A sample UMBCposter.% Rouben Rostamian, February 2010

\documentclass[paper=a4paper,landscape,dvipsnames]{umbcposter}
\begin{document}
\newcommand{\mytitle}{
\begin{tabular}{c}
    \LARGE\sc This is the title \\[0.6ex]
    \Large\sl Rouben Rostamian\\
    \Large UMBC
\end{tabular}
}
\posterinit{
%grid,
background style = {left color = Apricot, right color = white},
title = {\mytitle},
right logo,       % use default
left logo,        % use default
box/border style, % use default
box/header style, % use default
box/body style = {bottom color=blue!10, top color=red!5},
box/all rounded,
}
\boxit{col = 0, at top, name=box1}{Title of Box 1}{
\begin{itemize}
    \item col = 0
    \item at top
    \item name = box1
\end{itemize}
}
\boxit{col = 0, below of=box1, name=box2}{Title of Box 2}{
\begin{itemize}
    \item col = 0
    \item below of = box1
    \item name = box2
\end{itemize}
}
\end{document}

Answer 7

a0poster and sciposter are two document classes that are designed to help you make posters. a0poster worked better for me.

Answer 8

I recently dicovered baposter. It is based on pgf so tikz related things will work fine. The macros are fairly easy to understand and Brain (the author) shows quite a lot of examples.

All I can say that I recently won the poster price at a conference with a baposter designed poster.

Answer 9

The UK TeX FAQ has an entry Creating posters with LaTeX. I also have a tutorial Creating Technical Posters with LaTeX as well as a tutorial on creating LaTeX posters with a GUI. My flowfram package has already been mentioned in a comment. It has an example poster in the samples directory.

Answer 10

In the site LaTeX Templates there are three downloadable Conference Posters templates: baposter Portrait Poster, Dreuw & Deselaer's Poster and Jacobs Landscape Poster.

Example: Jacobs Landscape Poster

Description:

This poster template features a clean sectioned look suitable for presenting research at a conference. Important information is highlighted with colored boxes and each section within the poster is clearly separated from the others. The layout of the template contains four columns but this can be changed to accommodate varying amounts of information or figures. Examples of a table, figure, equation, list and bibliography are present in the template to provide a starting point for any requirement you may have for your own poster.

Original Author:

This template was originally created by the Computational Physics and Biophysics Group, Jacobs University and was then modified by Nathaniel Johnston. Finally, it has been extensively modified for this website.

uses

\documentclass[final]{beamer}
\usepackage[scale=1.24]{beamerposter}
\usetheme{confposter}