Move figure away from the first page

Question

In my LaTeX document, I don't want any figures on the first page. Is there a way to enforce this requirement?

Answer 1

You can suppress (further) floats on the current page using \suppressfloats. To avoid floats on the first page, just place it directly after \begin{document}.

Answer 2

You can use the afterpage package to postpone certain actions by one page. Here's a small example illustrating this with a figure:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{afterpage}% http://ctan.org/pkg/afterpage
\usepackage{lipsum}% http://ctan.org/pkg/lipsum
\begin{document}
\afterpage{% Place the figure *after* this page
  \begin{figure}[t]
    \centering\rule{150pt}{100pt}
    \caption{This is a figure caption}
  \end{figure}%
}
\lipsum[1-8]% dummy text
\end{document}

lipsum provides some dummy text, Lorem Ipsum style.

Answer 3

If you include just [t] in the figure placement specification (that is \begin{figure}[t]), then the figure can go only at the top of a page. If for some reason it can't go at the top of the first page -- perhaps because the title is there -- then that'll force it to go on the next page at least.

This answer is sufficiently simple that I'm guessing you've tried something like this and it didn't work. Are there other complications?