Advantages of using Scribus for poster making<\/h3>\n\n- It is a desktop publishing program, so it has very powerful features for handling text e.g. wrapping around images, linked text boxes, document-wide font styles, variable line spacings.\u00a0 You can even control things like kerning<\/a>.<\/li>\n
- It features simple-to-use tools (such as Align and Distribute) for precisely organising layouts.<\/li>\n
- Images are stored as links to files, so if you update your figure, the poster is updated automatically.<\/li>\n
- The output is a PDF file, which can be printed anywhere and is usually small enough to send by email (5-10 Mb), even for an A0 poster.<\/li>\n
- It’s open source, so you can install it on as many computers as you want, wherever you are.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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![\"\"](\"http:\/\/all-geo.org\/volcan01010\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/distribute.png\")
<\/a>The 'Align and Distribute' dialog is your best friend. It makes it simple to ensure that your text boxes and images are perfectly aligned. Click an item as a reference, shift-click the one that you want to move or resize, and then change it as you please. Find it in the 'Windows' menu.<\/p><\/div><\/h3>\n
If bands went to conferences…<\/h3>\n
The following is a demonstration of what you might see if bands went to conferences.\u00a0 Click it to see the full, A0-sized, PDF version.\u00a0 It has been made according to the American Geophysical Union (AGU) poster presentation guidelines<\/a>, which state that text should be at least 24 point in size to be readable at 2 m distance.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/all-geo.org\/volcan01010\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/Scribus_conference_example.png\")
<\/a>An example poster demonstrating titles, logos, text and image frames, figure captions, references and other features common to science conference posters. Click to see the full-quality PDF version (7Mb).<\/p><\/div>\n
You can download the template file here:
\nScribus_conference_template.sla<\/a> (right click, Save Link As)<\/p>\nPrettier posters are possible, but this demonstrates what you can make fairly quickly and easily.\u00a0 With this template, the hard work of setting up the page and defaults has already been done for you.\u00a0 It has defined style settings for Title, Authors, Section Heading, Figure Caption etc. so it is just a case of replacing the text and images with your own.\u00a0 It doesn’t take much more work to resize the boxes and personalise the layout, fonts and colours.<\/p>\n
The text size used in the bullet points here is actually 36pt size, which is more than AGU require.\u00a0 I think that most conference posters contain far too much text, so I would recommend keeping the large size.\u00a0 If you run out of space, then you are writing too much.<\/p>\n
Get Scribus<\/h3>\n
Get Scribus on Ubuntu Linux<\/a> via the Software Centre or by running the following command:<\/p>\nsudo apt-get install scribus scribus-doc<\/pre>\nOther Linux distributions should have it in their respective repositories.\u00a0 Windows and Mac users can download installation files from here<\/a>.<\/p>\nLearn More<\/h3>\n
There are some good tutorials for Scribus, including a Quick Start<\/a> guide, and some video guides on YouTube, such as this one<\/a>.\u00a0 It is worth having a look at them, as the range of options when you start can be a bit overwhelming.<\/p>\nTo find out more about useful free\/open source software for scientists, read my post ‘All the software a geoscientist needs.\u00a0 For free!<\/a>‘<\/p>\nHappy poster making!<\/p>\n
Scribus-specific tips<\/h3>\n\n- Use the Story Editor (ctrl-T<\/em>) to input and edit your text.\u00a0 Put all your headings and bullet points in the same text box and format them with the Style Manager.\u00a0 Make sure that you highlight all the text in a paragraph before applying a new style to it as some formatting can be applied to individual characters.<\/li>\n
- Make images fit their frames by r-click<\/em>, ‘Adjust Image to Frame<\/em>‘ followed by r-click<\/em>, ‘Adjust Frame to Image<\/em>‘.\u00a0 Resize by dragging corners, holding ctrl<\/em> to preserve the shape.<\/li>\n
- Use the Shape tab (r-click<\/em>, Properties<\/em>) section to make text flow around your images. You can then position them on top of a box of text and Scribus will adjust everything for you.<\/li>\n
- A red cross by your frame means that your text is over-running.<\/li>\n
- Use ‘Columns and Text Distances’<\/em> in the ‘Text’<\/em> section of ‘Properties’<\/em> to control offset between text and frame margins.\u00a0 You might need to enable this option by selecting ‘Show Text Frame Columns’<\/em> in the ‘View’<\/em> menu.<\/li>\n
- Use ctrl-shift-click<\/em> to access items that are beneath others in the pile.<\/li>\n
- Use the Style Manager (dialog labelled ‘Styles<\/em>‘ in ‘Edit<\/em>‘ menu) to change fonts, sizes, colours across the whole document.\u00a0 Local changes can be made in the Story Editor.<\/li>\n
- Use Layers (dialog in ‘Windows<\/em>‘ menu) to separate any background image from the main poster content.<\/li>\n
- Align and Distribute is your friend.<\/li>\n
- Lock items in place once you are happy with them (r-click<\/em>, ‘Is Locked<\/em>‘).<\/li>\n
- I used Gimp<\/a> to fade out the edges of the background image by following these instructions<\/a>.\u00a0 I also desaturated the image and increased the brightness to make it less distracting.<\/li>\n
- When you open the template file, you will get red crosses where the images should be.\u00a0 I didn’t include them in the file, in order to save on file size and because they aren’t my images.\u00a0 If you want to transfer your whole document and all the images to another machine, use the ‘Collect for Output<\/em>‘ option in the ‘File<\/em>‘ menu.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n
Prettier posters are possible, but this demonstrates what can be made quickly and easily.<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When you have the right tools to do a job, it is a lot easier to do it well. Consider making a poster for a science conference. Two software programs commonly used to make posters are Powerpoint and Adobe Illustrator … Continue reading
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<\/a>The 'Align and Distribute' dialog is your best friend. It makes it simple to ensure that your text boxes and images are perfectly aligned. Click an item as a reference, shift-click the one that you want to move or resize, and then change it as you please. Find it in the 'Windows' menu.<\/p><\/div><\/h3>\n
If bands went to conferences…<\/h3>\n
The following is a demonstration of what you might see if bands went to conferences.\u00a0 Click it to see the full, A0-sized, PDF version.\u00a0 It has been made according to the American Geophysical Union (AGU) poster presentation guidelines<\/a>, which state that text should be at least 24 point in size to be readable at 2 m distance.<\/p>\n An example poster demonstrating titles, logos, text and image frames, figure captions, references and other features common to science conference posters. Click to see the full-quality PDF version (7Mb).<\/p><\/div>\n You can download the template file here: Prettier posters are possible, but this demonstrates what you can make fairly quickly and easily.\u00a0 With this template, the hard work of setting up the page and defaults has already been done for you.\u00a0 It has defined style settings for Title, Authors, Section Heading, Figure Caption etc. so it is just a case of replacing the text and images with your own.\u00a0 It doesn’t take much more work to resize the boxes and personalise the layout, fonts and colours.<\/p>\n The text size used in the bullet points here is actually 36pt size, which is more than AGU require.\u00a0 I think that most conference posters contain far too much text, so I would recommend keeping the large size.\u00a0 If you run out of space, then you are writing too much.<\/p>\n Get Scribus on Ubuntu Linux<\/a> via the Software Centre or by running the following command:<\/p>\n Other Linux distributions should have it in their respective repositories.\u00a0 Windows and Mac users can download installation files from here<\/a>.<\/p>\n There are some good tutorials for Scribus, including a Quick Start<\/a> guide, and some video guides on YouTube, such as this one<\/a>.\u00a0 It is worth having a look at them, as the range of options when you start can be a bit overwhelming.<\/p>\n To find out more about useful free\/open source software for scientists, read my post ‘All the software a geoscientist needs.\u00a0 For free!<\/a>‘<\/p>\n Happy poster making!<\/p>\n When you have the right tools to do a job, it is a lot easier to do it well. Consider making a poster for a science conference. Two software programs commonly used to make posters are Powerpoint and Adobe Illustrator … Continue reading <\/a>
\nScribus_conference_template.sla<\/a> (right click, Save Link As)<\/p>\nGet Scribus<\/h3>\n
sudo apt-get install scribus scribus-doc<\/pre>\n
Learn More<\/h3>\n
Scribus-specific tips<\/h3>\n
\n
Prettier posters are possible, but this demonstrates what can be made quickly and easily.<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"