The hosting of posters for club events is a voluntary service set up and administered by the webmaster team and is intended to help promote events for member clubs. In order to make this run efficiently without over-burdening the webmaster team or fellow clubs, please follow the simple guidelines below.
Poster Design
Posters may be created in Word, Publisher, Photoshop, Illustrator or other design/layout packages. Ideally, use software that can produce a PDF output directly since that will often generate compact PDF (small file sizes). Though most users will have a broadband connection to the Internet, not everybody does and, increasingly, mobile devices are being used for web browsing. Thus, keeping the file size down is still an important consideration.
An image on the poster illustrating the talk can produce something eye-catching but too many images or a large image as the poster background may increase file size. Also, think about your target audience and how you wish them to promote your event to their club. If you wish clubs to display your poster on their notice board (many do), think how that poster may be printed - too many images or very dense images may result in lots of expensive ink being used to print it and many people will print it on standard paper where the image may not look good due to ink spread and saturation of the paper causing it to wrinkle - clubs will seldom print posters on expensive photo quality paper.
Compact PDF is best produced by using one of the above packages and adding images and text. Starting with a large image with text already embedded into the image will usually result in a large file because PDF sees this as one large image. Smaller images surrounded by text (which will be stored as text in the PDF) is the best approach.
Ensure your poster contains the following information:
Title of the event
Name(s) of judge(s)/speaker(s)
Venue (give a full address so that visitors have enough information to find the venue - include a post code for satnav user)
Date and time of event
Entrance fee (if applicable)
Contact telephone number. This is important as events booked and published some time ahead can change at the last minute and you may have visitors travelling some distance who will be disappointed.
Poster Format
The poster should be an A4-size PDF. Ideally, it should be in portrait orientation since that seems to display well on mobile devices and fit most club notice boards.
Summary
Only send us posters for key events: We do not have the resource, and nor will it be desirable, to replicate your entire club's programme. Key events may be an exhibition, a workshop, an inter-club competition or a lecture where you have invited a special speaker and wish to recoup costs with a larger audience.Make your poster eye-catching but keep the file size down and avoid making it 'heavy' on ink for clubs that print postersRemember to all include all relevant information like dates, venue and contact details for further infoSend your poster to posters@eaf.org.uk for inclusion in the web site.