Research poster sizes and structure

Confirm width, height and orientation

A0 has sides of 841 mm and 1189 mm. In our landscape template, the width is 1189 mm and the height is 841 mm. A 48 × 36 inch landscape poster is 48 inches wide and 36 inches high. Writing both dimensions with their direction avoids an orientation mistake.

Requirements vary. Cornell Engineering recommends 36 inches tall by 48 inches wide, while the historical 2019 Sheffield conference example asks for an A0 portrait or A1 landscape poster within its board dimensions. Follow your event, rather than assuming a common template will fit.

In PowerPoint, use Design, Slide Size and Custom Slide Size or Page Setup. Enter the actual width and height. Microsoft documents a maximum of 56 inches in either dimension. Both supplied profiles fit within that limit. Changing an existing slide size can resize content, so review it again afterward.

Build a concise research argument

A useful starting structure is title, authors and affiliations, objective or introduction, methods, results, conclusion and references. Include funding when the study or event requires it. The structure should fit the discipline and conference instructions.

Make the main finding easy to locate. Include enough method to understand the evidence and enough limitation to avoid overstating it. Sheffield's poster guidance explains how layout, font, text size and line length guide the reader. Reduce unnecessary prose before reducing type to an uncomfortable size.

Keep author names, affiliations, measurements and reference details faithful to the approved material. An AI proposal needs a human check against the source. A matching quotation proves that words occur in a source; it does not prove that a shortened scientific claim is correct.

Inspect figures at their final size

Keep the original figure and its caption together. Check labels, legends, uncertainty, units and color distinctions. Preserve the aspect ratio unless a deliberate, disclosed crop is appropriate. The current maker uses the full figure without cropping.

Effective DPI is the pixel width divided by the placed width in inches. A 2400-pixel image placed 12 inches wide has 200 DPI. The same image at 24 inches wide has 100 DPI. These are calculations, not a print-quality guarantee. A print provider may have different requirements for photographs, line art and viewing distance.

The exporter flags figures below 150 DPI at their placed size. Treat that as a prompt to inspect the original, especially text inside scientific plots. Enlarging a small file or increasing a metadata DPI value cannot recover missing detail.

Check the final PDF and editable file

Confirm the PDF page width and height in a PDF viewer or page-properties tool. Review the full poster and inspect small labels closely. Printing at “fit to page” can change the output size; follow the print provider's process.

Open the PPTX in the PowerPoint version you intend to use. Edit a heading and a table value, save, close and reopen it. Check the saved result, including text wrapping and figure captions. A file containing native text can still render differently across Office versions.

The provided PDF exporter sets actual physical page dimensions. It does not certify PDF/X, CMYK, bleed or a particular printer. Rich LaTeX, native Office equations, merged tables, portrait and arbitrary custom sizes remain unsupported.

Choose an editable research poster template

Editorial sources checked 21 October 2026. The accompanying cooling example uses owned synthetic data, not a real research claim.