Poster Guidelines

Producing conference posters with Rashid Lab branding

This page covers academic poster production using the lab’s --rl-* token system. See Color Palette, Typography & CSS Tokens for the canonical token reference.

New in April 2026

A poster template was missing from the lab brand assets prior to April 2026. This page introduces a starter Quarto Typst template that produces print-quality posters with the same visual register as naimurashid.github.io. The template lives at assets/branding/poster-template.qmd.txt (the .txt suffix keeps Quarto from trying to render it as part of the handbook build — copy it to a working directory and rename it to .qmd first).

Standard sizes

Most conferences accept either format. Confirm with the organizers before printing.

Format	Dimensions (inches)	Dimensions (cm)	Use
Landscape	48 × 36	122 × 91	ASA/JSM, ENAR default
Portrait	36 × 48	91 × 122	AACR, ASCO default
Tabloid	11 × 17	28 × 43	Lab meetings, internal review

Recommended toolchain

Quarto’s built-in format: typst is the lab’s preferred poster format. It produces print-quality PDFs faster than LaTeX, supports the --rl-* token system naturally, and works well with R-rendered figures. No third-party extension required — the starter template uses direct Typst page-layout primitives (#set page, #grid) so it renders out of the box on any Quarto 1.4+ install.

Alternatives that also work:

LaTeX beamerposter — battle-tested for math-heavy posters; slower build, more verbose source. Use this if you need fine-grained control over equation typography.
LaTeX tikzposter — modern LaTeX framework, good defaults.
PowerPoint — only as a last resort. Hard to version-control, hard to keep aligned with the lab’s typography system.

Typography

Role	Font	Use
Poster title	Source Serif 4, 80–110pt	Top of poster
Author block	Archivo, 32–40pt	Below title
Section headings (h2)	Archivo, 36–44pt, weight 600	Block labels
Body	Archivo, 24–28pt	Main content
Eyebrow / metadata	IBM Plex Mono, 18–22pt, uppercase	Section eyebrows
Figure captions	Source Serif 4 italic, 18–22pt	Below figures

The 24–28pt body is the floor for readability at typical poster-viewing distance (3–5 ft). At 36×48”, anything below 22pt is unreadable.

Color palette for posters

All web tokens carry over. Two adjustments specific to print:

Background: white (#FFFFFF). Avoid the web’s --rl-fog tint — it doesn’t reproduce reliably across CMYK printers.
Hairlines: bump to 1.5–2pt for print legibility (web uses 1px, which disappears under most print-shop drum scanners).

Otherwise the palette is identical to the web spec — see colors.qmd.

Layout grid

A clean academic poster reads in 3 column blocks for landscape or 2 column blocks for portrait. Each block has a consistent eyebrow + heading + content pattern.

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  [Logo]   POSTER TITLE — SERIF, 90PT                                 │
│           Authors · Affiliations · IBM Plex Mono caps                │
├──────────────┬───────────────────────────┬───────────────────────────┤
│ BACKGROUND   │ METHODS                   │ RESULTS                   │
│              │                           │                           │
│  body...     │  body...                  │  body...                  │
│              │                           │                           │
├──────────────┼───────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────┤
│ APPROACH     │ FIGURE                    │ CONCLUSIONS               │
│              │  ┌────────────────────┐   │                           │
│  body...     │  │   panel            │   │  body...                  │
│              │  └────────────────────┘   │                           │
│              │  Figure 1. caption        │  CONTACT · QR ···         │
└──────────────┴───────────────────────────┴───────────────────────────┘

Quarto Typst starter

Create a new poster from assets/branding/poster-template.qmd.txt:

cp ~/rashid-lab-setup/lab-handbook/assets/branding/poster-template.qmd.txt ./my-poster.qmd
cp ~/rashid-lab-setup/lab-handbook/assets/branding/logos/RLlogoA.png ./
quarto render my-poster.qmd

The template uses Quarto’s built-in Typst format. Render with:

quarto render my-poster.qmd

Typst is included with recent Quarto versions; no separate install needed.

Font installation

For the rendered PDF to use Archivo + Source Serif 4 + IBM Plex Mono (the lab’s brand fonts), install them on your system. On macOS / Linux, the simplest path is to download from Google Fonts and drop the .ttf files into ~/.fonts/ (Linux) or ~/Library/Fonts/ (macOS), then run fc-cache -f (Linux only).

If the fonts aren’t installed, Typst falls back gracefully to system defaults — the layout still renders, but visual fidelity to the rest of the lab system isn’t preserved. Quarto will print warnings like unknown font family: archivo to flag this.

YAML frontmatter

The starter template uses minimal YAML so Quarto’s default article wrapper doesn’t fight the body’s page-size #set rule:

---
format:
  typst:
    keep-typ: true
keep-md: false
---

keep-typ: true is optional — it preserves the generated .typ file alongside the PDF, useful for debugging layout issues.

All page setup, brand tokens, title block, and footer live in the Typst code blocks below the YAML. See assets/branding/poster-template.qmd.txt for the full source.

Color & font setup in Typst

The starter template includes this block at the top of the body. Adapt the page dimensions for portrait or different conferences as needed:

#set page(
  width: 48in,
  height: 36in,
  margin: (top: 1.0in, bottom: 0.8in, left: 1.0in, right: 1.0in),
  fill: white,
)

#let rl-navy          = rgb("#13294B")
#let rl-navy-deep     = rgb("#0B1D3A")
#let rl-carolina      = rgb("#4B9CD3")
#let rl-carolina-deep = rgb("#2E6A9F")
#let rl-graphite      = rgb("#5B6670")
#let rl-ink           = rgb("#1A202C")
#let rl-fog           = rgb("#F4F6F8")
#let rl-mist          = rgb("#E6EAEF")

#set text(font: "Archivo", fill: rl-ink, size: 26pt)
#show heading: set text(font: "Archivo", weight: "semibold", fill: rl-navy)
#show heading.where(level: 2): set text(size: 40pt)
#show heading.where(level: 3): set text(size: 30pt)
#show raw: set text(font: "IBM Plex Mono", size: 0.95em)
#show link: set text(fill: rl-carolina-deep)
#show emph: set text(font: "Source Serif 4", style: "italic")

Print prep checklist

Before sending to a print shop:

Convert all figures to 300 DPI minimum (600 DPI for fine line art, schematics, gel images).
Embed all fonts in the PDF (Quarto/Typst does this by default; LaTeX requires pdftex with embedded fonts).
Check color profile: most print shops want CMYK for offset printing, sRGB for digital roll printing. Confirm.
Add 3mm bleed on each edge if the print shop requests it (many do for full-bleed layouts).
Save the final PDF with flattened layers — some print shops reject layered PDFs.
Order at least 2 days before the conference for shipping buffer; 1 week if the conference is across the country.

Logo placement

Top-left or top-right of the poster, sized to ~10% of poster width.
Use RLlogoA.png on white poster bg; RLlogoAwhite.png if you have a navy/Carolina header bar.
For multi-affiliation posters, add UNC Gillings + UNC Lineberger logos in addition to the lab logo. Get those from UNC’s official brand site.

Don’ts

These are the same anti-patterns the website’s visual register avoids, adapted for print:

❌ Decorative gradients on backgrounds or section headers
❌ Drop shadows or 3D effects on figures or text
❌ Heavy colored boxes around content blocks (white space + hairline rules carry the layout)
❌ Marketing-orange #FF9E1B (use the dulled #C48A1A if you need a warm accent)
❌ More than 3 colors total (navy + Carolina + one accent maximum)
❌ Comic Sans, Arial, or Times New Roman as the primary typefaces. Always use Archivo, Source Serif 4, IBM Plex Mono.

Examples

The lab does not currently maintain a public gallery of past posters. For reference, the visual register the new tokens produce closely matches the Stanford Statistics poster style guide and the Berkeley Biostat poster examples — restrained, typographic, hairline-driven.