How to draft a professional archaeology poster using LibreOffice Impress

Poster presentations offer one important way of sharing archaeological findings and soliciting feedback on early stage research. This tutorial presents a practical method along with some tips and tricks for drafting a professional poster using free, open-source software.

Materials

To complete this tutorial, you will need a computer with LibreOffice installed. LibreOffice is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems. Follow the installation instructions provided on the LibreOffice website. Instructions will vary by operating system and version. This tutorial is based on LibreOffice version 24.2. This tutorial is furthermore produced on linux Ubuntu 24.04 operating system, which may entail small (but sometimes frustrating) differences for users working with Mac or Windows operating systems.

Because effective posters also require high-quality imagery and graphics, I recommend that you complete the Forager Lab's Basic image editing with Gimp tutorial as a compliment to this tutorial. If you wish to include high-quality data visualizations, consider visiting the Forager Lab's Basic statistical programming with R tutorial.

Procedure

This procedure will guide you through the process of creating a professional research poster. Your product will be a poster template that you can customize for your project. The template that you will produce will look something like this:

Not only will you be able to use this product as a template for poster production but you will also gain the skills to edit the poster parameters to fit your needs or stylistic preferences.

1. Open LibreOffice
2. Create your poster–In the menu bar, click File>New>Presentation to open a blank presentation document. You can also just click the Impress Presentation shortcut button, which should be on the left side of the screen.
3. When the new document opens, you may see a "Select a Template" screen. Close it.
4. Set your poster size to the physical size that you want your poster to be. Some poster sessions will specify maximum poster dimensions. Moreover, poster printers often have a width limitation, typically 48" (4 ft). I recommend a landscape oriented poster that is 48" wide x 36" tall. This is large enough to allow for font and graphics sizes that can be viewed at a distance but within the common size constraints of poster sessions.
   1. In the menu bar, click Slide>Slide Properties.
   2. In the Slide tab, set the Width to 48" and the Height to 36".
   3. Enter.
5. Save your poster. You can do this with the Ctrl+s keyboard shortcut or by clicking File>Save in the menu toolbar. Be sure to save your work to a folder on your computer that you will be able to easily recall later.
6. Clean your slate. By default, Impress creates text entry boxes on your slide. Remove these be either selecting and deleting them or by clicking on the blank layout in the Layouts window (if you don't see it on the side of your screen, click View>Sidebar in the menu toolbar.) Your blank poster should look as follows.
7. Add guidelines to ensure precise placement of text and graphical elements. A common convention to optimize the lenth of text lines (not too long, not too short) is to divide a poster into three columns, which is what we will do. Given that our poster is 48" wide, we will place guidelines at 16" and 32".
1. In the menu bar, cick View>Ruler to turn on your document ruler.
2. Left click-and-drag on the vertical/left ruler. You will see a dashed line. Drag that line until it meets the 16" mark on the horizontal/top ruler.
3. Repeat the last step dragging to the 32" mark.
4. Repeat six more times, dragging to the 1", 15", 17", 31", 33", and 47" marks. These guidelines will serve as column margins.
5. Repeat twice more, but this time dragging from the top ruler to the 1" and 35" marks on the side ruler. Your poster should now look as follows:
8. Add a textbox for your title as follows:
   1. Click the textbox icon that looks like .
   2. Left click-and-drag on the intersection of the top and left guidlines. Drag to the right guidline and down to about the 6" mark.
   3. In the Character Properties window (should be on the right of your screen), set your font size to 96 pt.
   4. Enter your poster title.
   5. Feel free to adjust the text position, style, color, etc. using the tools in the Character Properties sidebar.
   6. Change the text box color by first right-clicking on the margin of your title text box.
   7. A pop-up window should appear. Select "Area."
   8. Another pop-up window should appear. In the Area tab, select color, and pick a color for your background.
   9. Vertically center your title text by right clicking on the text box, selecing Text Attributes, and clicking on the center point in the Text Anchor prompt. You can also center your text horizontally using the Align Center button (sybmol with four centered horizontal lines) in the Properties>Character>Paragraph sidebar panel. Your poster should look something like this:
9. Add an Introduction text box to the first (left) column.
   1. Click the textbox icon that looks like .
   2. Left click-and-drag on the intersection of the top and left guidlines. Drag to the right guidline and down to about the 6" mark.
   3. In the Character Properties window (should be on the right of your screen), set your font size to 48 pt.
   4. Enter "Introduction", and add additional introductory text. Adjust the text position, style, color, etc. using the tools in the Character Properties sidebar. I recommend 48 pt, bold font for section titles and 48 pt regular font for regular text. Your poster should look something like this:
10. If you do not already have an image that you would like to use, download the following image to your computer: excavation.png. Be sure to note the folder to where you download the file.
11. Add a graphic–one of your own, or the one above–to your poster by clicking Insert>Image in the menu bar.
1. Navigate to and select the image you wish to show, and click "Open." You should see the image on the poster.
2. Position and resize the image by clicking and dragging on the image or the handle bars on the image. Make sure it's positioned and sized to fit between your guidelines.
12. Save your poster. Have you saved your file lately? It's good practice to save your file frequently in case of crashes.
13. Add additional textboxes and graphics using the tools you learned above to You can also add nice data tables using the Insert>Table tool in the menu bar. See also the Forager Lab LibreOffice Writer manuscript tutorial for more information on making tables. Here is an example of some tinkering:
14. Export in pdf format for easy file sharing and printing by simply clicking the pdf icon in the upper toolbar (). The pdf file will appear in the same folder as your Impress (odp) file.
15. Save your poster.
16. Share and present your poster. Good luck!