The Honors Project Poster | the journal of experience + inquiry

Why do I need to create a poster?

While honors projects are largely independent projects, they occur in our wider community of learners. Sharing this work is one of the ways that we affirm our learning values. By making these projects visible to others through the poster, your work can find a wider audience; it can provoke and inspire others to think more deeply about your topic. Perhaps your work will also serve as the catalyst for another student’s honors project inquiry.

Why do I need to create a poster that conforms to a certain set of criteria?

Poster sessions are pretty common at most academic conferences. The set of criteria for the posters provides a framework for sharing the work and makes it easier to display them. We also believe that printing high-quality versions of this work helps to reinforce the time, energy and effort that you have put into the project. As a school, we talk a lot about the importance of the process. At the same time, an intentional approach to the content and design of a final product like the posters affirms that the product does matter and when done well also affirms the process that lies behind the work.

What content should be in my poster?

Since it is likely that your project produced more content than can go on a single poster, you need to think about what content will best help you to tell the story of your project. At a minimum, your poster should include:

the title of your project
a brief explanation of what you set out to do (for most of you you can probably use the description in your original proposal; if the scope/focus of the project changed, you may need to revise this)
some portion of the actual final product (text and where relevant images)
QR code(s) to link to other content (e.g., essays, creative writing, a full gallery of images, a website, video, etc.) This is a way to expand the content of the poster and to connect to product/process that can’t be easily included in the poster. The QR code would link to info that is hosted on other site (google docs, vimeo, etc.) or to your updated post on the honors project blog that can have this content embedded in the post). You can use this site to create the QR code: https://www.qr-code-generator.com/
some content about the process you undertook to complete the work
some reflection on the project related to the content of the project and insights about yourself as a learner

Do posters need to be a certain size?

All posters should be designed in a format that is 18″ x 24″ (portrait orientation).

What software should I use?

You can design the poster in a google doc, drawing, or slide (here is a template you can use — just copy to your drive account), powerpoint, in one of the Adobe products (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign), or any other piece of design software that will (1) allow you to create a workspace that is 18″ x 24″ and (2) will allow you to export your work as a PDF file. In order to specify a custom page size in a google doc, you’ll need to add this add-on: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/page-layout-tool/gfakgjoccafkhfmbmfdeppolacopnidb?hl=en

When should I start working on my poster?

By the middle of the trimester, you and your project mentor should begin to discuss the shape of your final product and how you will share it on the blog update and as a poster. You can review the timeline for honors projects here. Probably a good idea to not save the poster for the very last moment. Build in the time you will need to produce something of value.

I have my poster saved as a PDF file. What do I do with it?

Email your completed poster-as-a-pdf file to Mark Silberberg (msilberberg@lrei.org) by the communicated date. The school will print the pdf files into a high quality poster.

Okay. I sort of get it. Can you show me any examples?

View a gallery here and a few examples are below: