Arguments in Space... Putting Philosophy on a Poster

So, SPP/ESPP accepted your submission as a poster only, and now you're wondering how you can possibly condense 3,000 words of brilliant argumentation into 3 ft by 4ft (0.9m x 1.2m).

You toy with the idea of just printing out your paper and pasting the pages to some poster board, but you know (yes, you know) that if you do that, fewer people will read it than if you were to spam the SPP mailing list with the paper.

So, what's a visually-challenged philosopher to do?

For philosophy posters it's really important to "think structurally" rather than linearly.  Try to structure the poster graphically around the central argument/issue.  (Some of you do, after all, teach students to diagram arguments.) 

Put your main thesis in a box somewhere prominent on the poster -- could be centered, or at the top, and then hang off the various supporting and opposing arguments.  Use color, images and lines to guide people to the main points. 

To get an idea of how the layout might work, take a look at MacroVu's "Can computers think?" posters:
  http://www.macrovu.com/CCTGeneralInfo.html.
These posters are bigger and denser than you should use for a conference poster, but the basic organizational idea can be adapted.  

You should use much larger fonts for a conference poster.  Everything should be readable from 5-6 feet (1.7-2.0 m) away.  24 pt font is probably the absolute minimum to use for details.  Much larger for the main headings and points.

There are some very good general tips that apply as much to philosophy posters as to science posters on pages three and four of this document from FSU:
  http://med.fsu.edu/informatics/PostersPublisher.pdf
(The first two pages explain how to use Microsoft Publisher to create poster, which brings us to our next topic.)

Technical issues

Software: If you're committed to Microsoft products, then Microsoft Publisher is your best choice.  Some people use Powerpoint to create posters, but it's not ideal, and Word definitely lacks sufficient flexibility.  If you have access to Adobe software (many colleges have a campus licensing agreement), Pagemaker is probably the  best choice, although some of their other publishing and layout programs are fine.  Mac users can also use Pagemaker, and there are other layout programs such as Create. (OmniGraffle also provides a nice set of special tools.)  Linux has Scribus, among others possibilities.  In all cases, you'll need to find out how to set a custom page size to match the conference requirements. Make sure you know the maximum dimensions in horizontal and vertical directions.

Printing: Most campuses have large format printers available.  You can also get posters printed at most copy shops, such as Kinkos.  Your best bet for taking or sending a file to the printer is to save the document as PDF, but Microsoft Publisher doesn't make that easy, so you should instead follow the directions in the FSU handout.  You can roll up the poster and carry onboard an airplane with you.

Pins and things:  Most conferences provide only the space to attach your poster, and not the pins to do it, so it's a good idea to travel with some means to attach your poster to the backing.  Different locations provide different substrates (walls, easels, etc.) so you should always check the local arrangements.  With some kinds of backing material, Velcro works well.