Learned about Poster at last...

This semester, I have to attend this very interesting course called the Advanced Technical Communication. I was actually really looking forward to it.

This week, we managed to learn about Posters Presentation, something that I really like doing, well, a big YES when it comes to designing creatively! Yeay!!!

So, what was assigned to us on Thursday, was to walk around the corridors, and capture (with our camera) all the posters that might interest us and those that might not. There were many of them, but my mate and I just captured 5 of them, which we thought has some positive and negative points on them. The group mate that I was working with, has many years of experiences going to conferences, submitting posters and papers, and she gave me a lot of tips!!! Which I really really appreciate them. Well, you know, as a new comer, there is not much thing that I have experience before, therefore, having a friend whom knows in and out about this would meant a lot, you know.

And so, once the walk around thingy ended, we went back to the Interact Lab to upload all the pictures. The day ends, and we were to gather again the next day to discuss further on our findings.

Our lecturer had managed to help us in thinking of the bad and good points of designing a poster. She has soooo many collections of them, and put them up for us to see and evaluate. The workshop/class starts with ourselves gathering all the pictures we had taken, and in groups, commented on our findings. It was awesome really, when you discussed about it, you then gets a lot of amazing feedbacks and answers to all your questions in mind.

Being me, who measure myself as having a graphical/visual mind, I love graphics and images and do not fancy having words all over the posters. It is a bit biased though when evaluating posters, because I tend to like those with graphics pictures better. But I did try my best to be balanced and evaluate as fair as I could. Despite all this, I did find this activity very useful for myself, as it answers some of the questions in my head.

What was there in my head?
1. Do we have to have lots and lots of wordings on posters? I hate it! (I'm sorry but I'm just being myself... ;p)
2. Does being able to design beautifully would give extra marks for winning a poster?
3. What does it take to win a poster? Because I've seen a few that won, and it was not being designed beautifully, but, does have a proper way of putting things, like very structured wise. Well, I guess I understand why...

We were then split to 2 groups again, and we discussed on points of good and bad posters:



Now, that we had this short course on Poster design, it really helps to clear up my mind, that:

• Poster could be beautifully designed, but with improper data, would not be at its best presentation.
• Poster could be presented with very good info and even though not creatively design, could win because of its very structured way of presenting ideas or knowledge.
• Poster should have a balance of both knowledge/data and graphics images. Too much of either one would not give the best result.

So, people.. I really hope this would help you in a way...

GOOD LUCK in your Poster design!!!