3 tips for designing conference posters that boost sign-ups

“So many conferences to attend, so little time!” That’s what your potential conference attendees are saying, as they shake their heads and wonder which conferences they should sign up for.

Your conference posters will need to grab their attention and get them excited about your conference. After all, you want them to show up for your conference. Even if—and especially if—this means missing out on someone else’s!

So let’s take a look at three tips for maximizing your conference posters’ effectiveness in attracting sign-ups:

1. Present your conference information in a readable format

While your conference poster will need to be informative, make its contents easy on the eye for readers. And this means not inserting a huge chunk of text into your poster.

Such a wall of words can be intimidating to read, causing people to skip it (and hence your conference altogether).

To increase the readability of your conference poster, you can also:

1. Break up your points in short paragraphs and sentences. These will be easier to read than sentences and paragraphs that seemingly have no end.
2. Use simple words. Unless you’re holding an academic conference where you need to use academic jargon, try to keep the language of your poster as simple as possible.
3. Experiment with different font sizes. Display headings and more important information in a larger font size, and general information in a smaller font size.

You can also use lists! Just check out the list we did above on increasing poster readability—doesn’t it make our three points easier to follow?

And here’s another example courtesy of Singapore’s Early Childhood Development Agency. The agency used a bulleted list in its poster to feature its conference highlights:

2. Insert relevant visuals

Apart from making your conference poster easier to read, make your poster stand out by adding appealing imagery. The extra splash of color from these images may just help your poster catch someone’s eye and entice them to sign up.

When picking visuals for your posters, be sure to shortlist only relevant ones. For sure, pictures of scantily clad women and adorable kittens tend to draw interest. But using these in your posters might not help one bit if you aren’t holding a, say, lingerie or pets conference respectively.

Here’s an example worth following from the Dubai International Food Safety Conference:

With the conference being about food safety, the conference organizers have inserted a visual of an apple into their poster. And of a bright, shiny one too, to really increase the chances of attracting attention.

3. Add QR codes

In your conference flyer, you’ll usually want to tell people how they can register for your conference.

The typical way of doing so is to include a registration link in your poster. But the problem with this approach is that people will need to manually key your link into their browser to register. They may find this too troublesome to do—especially if your link is loooooong. And if so, they may not bother with the effort, causing you to lose sign-ups.

So instead, insert a QR code containing your link into your poster! This way, people can just scan the QR code with their phone if they want to sign up. How convenient is that?

For instance, check out the QR code that the University of the Philippines Los Baños’ Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics added to its conference poster to complement its registration link:

P.S.: If you’re creating your conference poster with PosterMyWall, use our built-in QR code generator to generate and insert QR codes into your poster. Learn more about this here.

Here’s a video guide to help you get started:

Create polished conference posters with PosterMyWall

Depending on the scale of your conference, your budget for marketing it may be more limited. But don’t fret! With PosterMyWall, you can create beautiful conference posters at a low cost and without hiring the services of a professional designer.

First, select one of our conference poster templates to work with a preset layout of your choice. We’ve got a huge range of conference designs to choose from, so you’re bound to find a conference template that you like.

After that, use our drag-and-drop graphic design editor to customize the template with your conference text and visuals. Don’t forget to use the tips we shared above as you design your poster.

Download your finished design, then share it everywhere to start promoting your conference! Want to get started? Then click here to choose the perfect template for your conference today.