LibGuides: Communicating Research: Poster Design: Text and Fonts

Text

Plan and consider what is important to include. As space is limited, you need to prioritise what should be included. Consider the following:

Who are your intended audience, and what is your key message? Is the audience already familiar with the topic?
If you include abbreviations or acronyms, consider if the audience is familiar with those terms.
Use the active voice when crafting sentences. The active voice uses less words than the passive voice.
- Active - The participants consumed the food.
- Passive - The food was consumed by the participants.
When drafting sentences, think of them as bullet points (short sentences). Be succinct.
Edit relentlessly.
Aim to have no more than 5 - 6 lines in a block of text.
Use left-alignment for body text.
If the background of poster is light coloured, use a dark colour for the text. Aim for good contrast between background and text.

Number of Words

A1 size poster - Aim for about 250 to 400 words
A0 size poster - Aim for about 300 to 600 words

Tips
Do consider space limitations and font sizes

Creating contrast and emphasis

Use different font styles to create contrast and to emphasise words. For example:
- SMALL CAPS
- Italics
- Boldface
- highlight / colour block text
Avoid underlining a series of words as this may have a negative impact on readability.
Use colour as an organizing tool. Example below: Using a teal box for headers helps audience to immediately identify sections at a glance. Font type and style is also used to create contrast between headers and body text.

Fonts

Types of fonts

Four common ones include Serif | Sans Serif | Script | Decorative

Choice of fonts

Use fonts that are easy to read and professional looking. Examples of Serif and Sans Serif fonts that are suitable for posters include:

Serif

Sans Serif

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Garamond Garamond Garamond

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Georgia Georgia Georgia

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Times New Roman Times New Roman Times New Roman

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Gills Sans Gill Sans Gill Sans

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Tahoma Tahoma Tahoma

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Verdana Verdana Verdana

These fonts have letters and numerals that do well on legibility and they have multiple weights (boldface or italics).

Tips

Use the selected font(s) consistently throughout the poster (repetition).
Avoid using more than 3 different fonts in one poster.
Sans Serif are said to be more legible than Serif fonts when being read at a distance.
Consider the use of font pairings to add contrast. When deciding on fonts to use, consider legibility. (See Fonts at https://www.posternerd.com/tutorials/poster-design-layout.aspx)

Font sizes

You may use font sizes to achieve visual hierarchy (contrast & emphasis). Hence, the title of the poster, its headers and sub-headers are displayed using different font sizes and are comparatively bigger than the body text.

Legibility Reading Guideline

Legible from	Minimum
1.8m, 6ft	30pt
3m, 10ft	48pt
4.2m, 14ft	72pt

Tips

Be consistent (repetition). If you plan to use 36 pt for the headers, ensure that this is applied for all headers. Avoid changing to a smaller font sizes when you are short on space. To create space, attempt to reduce the number of words.
Aim for a reading legibility of at least 1 - 1.5m (printed poster).

You can increase the sizes if you have sufficient space. Consider using less text to create more space for larger fonts.

Interactive Typography Tutorial

If you are not sure which fonts to use, check out this Interactive Typography Tutorial. In 5 minutes, you will learn:

Best practices for styling text
How to pick great fonts
Typographical design patterns you can apply to your own designs