HMC Poster Class

The HMC Poster LaTeX class was developed by Claire Connelly, mathematics department systems administrator.

In addition to the class and support files, this archive includes a sample poster.

The Code

Current release is 4.0 (2012-08-21).

The files are installed in a shared TEXMF tree located at /shared/local/texlive/texmf-local; the full path to the most recently released version is /shared/local/texlive/texmf-local/tex/latex/hmcposter. If you're on a math cluster machine, you can use them without downloading anything. The sample documents can also be copied from this directory.

If you choose to do your work on your own machine, you can download the latest released files in tar or ZIP format.

Using the Class

To use the class, you will need to create a LaTeX document using the hmcposter document class. This package includes two files, sample-clinic-poster.tex and sample-thesis-poster.tex that can be used to typeset sample posters and can also be used as guides for creating a poster for a Clinic project or for a thesis project.

The “switch” is a document-class option provided when loading the document class. clinic puts the class into “Clinic poster” mode and thesis puts the class into “thesis poster” mode. The thesis mode can also be used to create posters for other classes.

Note that these modes define slightly different sets of commands for providing information about the poster, the project, and the author or team (including advisors and readers where appropriate). You will need to define the correct set of commands for the type of poster you're creating (again, see the sample documents, which include a list of these commands and explanations).

For Clinic posters, you will also need a logo image for your sponsor's organization. A vector-format image (generally a PDF file) is best, but a high-resolution (300 dpi or better) image at a reasonable size for appearing on a poster will also work. (For use with PDFLaTeX, which is the only supported way to compile documents with this class, you will need a PNG file.)

More details about using this class are available in the sample poster files.

Creating Good Posters

Posters are a special form of communication. They have to be eye-catching and have enough information to get a viewer interested in your topic, but not have so much detail that they're overwhelming.

The goal is to get someone interested enough to talk to you about the project in person (if you're actively presenting the poster) or to contact you by e-mail or download your more detailed report from your website (i.e., you need to tell them where to go for more information).

We have a page on creating good posters that we strongly encourage you to read and use to guide the creation of your poster.

Alternatives

With the most recent release of the hmcposter class, we strongly encourage you to use it in preference to other options. However, we do also support some alternative formats for creating posters; more information is available from our poster-printing page.