Poster Project

poster session In this assignment, you will repurpose a paper, essay, or other academic piece that you've written which advances an argument or elaborates a complex idea. You will translate this argument or elaboration into a "high resolution" poster laying out the argument or idea of the paper by combining visual and verbal discoures,

The poster will be based on the "poster presentation," an increasingly common means of presenting research and writing at professional/academic conferences

Criteria:

that the poster is indeed a large-format poster of standard size and shape: approximately 48x36"
that the poster is communicating an argument or complex idea, which has been elaborated in an academic or professional paper, essay, or other sustained written form. (A printout of the original text should be included with the commentary, printed two pages per sheet to save paper.)
how well the poster visually breaks down the argument or idea into its component parts
how appropriately and thoughtfully the poster's overall design suggests the dynamic relations of these parts, as Tufte describes in his chapter "Visual Confections."
the extent to which each of the idea's/arguement's parts are themselves elaborated visually and verbally (as in Tufte's detail of the chickens on the harpsicord, one part of the pig illustration used by 17th century law students to memorize the topics of ancient legal texts).
that the poster integrates words and images effectively into a unified whole, and contains no more than 800-1,000 words of text.
the degree to which the poster works from far away (6 feet): that is, the overall visual design, the title/banner, the major visual components all suggest both unity and richness
the degree to which the poster works from close up, rewarding closer examination and reading.
whether the poster design prominently includes introductory text which serves to interest the viewer--and not just blandly summarize--should be no longer than 200 words
that the poster includes a complete Works Cited or Bibliography (format depends on the discipline, but every detail should be correct for that field). This block of text usually appears in the less desirable real estate at the bottom of the poster)
the degree to which the project demonstrates a technical grasp of the software and workflows introduced in class this semester
how explicitly these criteria above are discussed in a formal, well-written, grammatically correct commentary of at least 500 words.
whether the commentary includes at least two quotations from the Tufte readings, and uses them to provide genuine perspectives on the "analytical design" of the poster project (cited correctly using MLA-style in-text citation format and bibliographic documentation at the end of the commentary).
how well the commentary uses a quotation from Levy to conclude with some insight into the poster or the poster genre, placing it into a larger cultural, historical, disciplinary, or intellectual context introduced by Levy (cited correctly using MLA-style in-text citation format and bibliographic documentation at the end of the commentary).

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