LaTeX Template for Mike Morrison's #betterposter
Now available in Overleaf!
The Better Poster is Mike Morrison's response to the traditional academic poster. In his own words:
Every field in science uses the same, old, wall-of-text poster design. If we can improve the knowledge transfer efficiency of that design even by a little bit, it could have massive ripple effects on all of science.
Also, poster sessions tend to suck, so here's my pitch to make them more efficient AND more fun with a new approach to designing scientific posters/academic posters that is both more usable, and easier to create!
The template has been implemented as a LaTeX class, betterposter.cls
. You can load it into your tex
file by using the command
\documentclass{betterposter}
\betterposter
commandThe main command provided by the betterposter
class is \betterposter
. The command takes three arguments: the content of the central, left and right columns, respectively. You type the content in, and the command takes care of the formatting.
\betterposter{
% content of the main column
}{
% content of the left column
}{
% content of the right column
}
\maincolumn
commandThe \maincolumn
command takes care of the formatting of the main column. It takes two arguments: the content of the main section (for the main point of the poster), and the content of the bottom section (destined for the QR code).
\maincolumn{
% main point of the poster
}{
% QR code
}
\qrcode
commandThe \qrcode
command formats the QR code for the poster. It takes three arguments: the path for the QR code image, the path for a small icon (a smartphone by default), and the caption ("Take a picture to download the full paper" by default).
\qrcode{path/to/image}{path/to/icon}{
% caption
}
Alternatively, the \compactqrcode
command renders a more compact link by omitting the small icon.
\compactqrcode{path/to/image}{
% caption
}
You should include a QR code that links to a relevant document which complements the poster (your paper, a website containing simulations or data...) There are many free QR code tools available, I have used www.qr-code-generator.com.
The example included in the template points to this repository:
You can also create QR codes which contain a logo:
The betterposter
class accepts three options which change the paper size:
a0paper
, for A0, the default size.a1paper
, for A1.a2paper
, for A2.These options behave like the usual LaTeX class options, for instance:
\documentclass[a0paper]{betterposter}
The betterposter
class extends the basic article
class. Any options you give betterposter
, other than the ones mentioned above, will be passed directly to article
. For instance,
\documentclass[a0paper,fleqn]{betterposter}
will let betterposter
deal with the a0paper
option, but will pass fleqn
directly to article
.
These commands should be placed before \begin{document}
.
You can customise the width of the columns:
\setlength{\leftbarwidth}{value}
.\setlength{\rightbarwidth}{value}
.You can change the margins of the columns:
\setlength{\columnmarginvertical}{value}
.\setlength{\columnmarginhorizontal}{value}
.\setlength{\maincolumnmarginvertical}{value}
.\setlength{\maincolumnmarginhorizontal}{value}
.The \fontsize
command takes two arguments, the size
(the size of the font in pt
) and the baselineskip
(usually you want baselineskip
to be roughly 1.25 times the size
.
You can change specific font sizes:
\renewcommand{\fontsizestandard}{\fontsize{28}{35} \selectfont}
.\renewcommand{\fontsizemain}{\fontsize{28}{35} \selectfont}
.\renewcommand{\fontsizetitle}{\fontsize{28}{35} \selectfont}
.\renewcommand{\fontsizeauthor}{\fontsize{28}{35} \selectfont}
.\renewcommand{\fontsizesection}{\fontsize{28}{35} \selectfont}
.Additionally, you can change the font size of a specific text segment by placing the text in brackets as:
{\fontsize{28}{35} \selectfont Your text goes here}
The class defines the theme colours of the original design:
empirical
: (0,77,64)
,theory
: (26,35,126)
,methods
: (140,22,22)
,intervention
: (255,213,79)
,as well as imperialblue
: (0,62,116)
.
You can change the background and the font colours:
\renewcommand{\columnbackgroundcolor}{black}
.\renewcommand{\columnfontcolor}{gray}
.\renewcommand{\maincolumnbackgroundcolor}{empirical}
.\renewcommand{\maincolumnfontcolor}{gray}
.You can find me on twitter, @rtsbailo.