So you want to make a poster to advertise your SFA event? Cool.

• Step one: grab our templates and images and see if you want to use them: Here's a blank poster in MS Word format (*note, it says Saturday on it so be sure not to use this template for friday events) and the same thing in Rich Text Format (works in any word processor). Here's the map we like to put at the bottom of our posters and here's the map on our web page. This, this and this are various shadings of the SFA logo. You're under no obligation to use any of this. However, it is good to let people know who and where we are, so keep that in mind. Please make sure that the poster says "SFA" or "Science Fiction Alliance" somewhere on it.

• Step two: Make sure you included the date on your poster. That means the month and day at a bare minimum. Day of week is nice too. If you don't, people won't know if the event has happened yet or not, nor will they know if they can take our posters down.

• Step three: If you decided to make your poster in a picture editing program instead of a word processor, make sure you don't save it as a jpeg or any other lossy format. You don't know if format X is a problem? Print a copy. If it looks blurry or has odd splotches near color borders, that's bad. These formats generally look good on computer monitors, but not on paper. Try saving as PNG or BMP instead (you may need to start over to get a sharp image, sorry).

• Step four: Print out 75 copies of your poster and bring them to the Scifi House lounge, where house members will take them to hang up. There are three respectable ways of doing this:

  • (1) Print in a public lab on "one-sided paper" (that is, paper that has already been used on one side). The Stats and Mathematica labs in the 2nd and 3rd floors, respectively, in the CMC are good places to do this, since usually you will be the only one trying to use the printer and the printers there are easy to load.

  • (2) Print one copy and then use your own money to photocopy it.

  • (3) Print all copies using your own personal computer, paper, and toner.

  We prefer (1), as it "doesn't use any paper" (clearly, if the one-sided paper supply runs out, then you contributed to trees being chopped down, but I've rarely seen this happen) and "doesn't cost any money" (your tuition pays for the toner, but no one will know). It has been traditional to print about 5 color posters for the most important places on campus and have the rest be black+white. If you have pictures that look good in both color and greyscale, you could do this.