Language Diversity Conference/Posters

Have you completed a great project and want other language activists to know about the results? Submit a poster.

There will be an opportunity for relevant projects to showcase their work at the Language Diversity Conference by displaying posters. It will feature all posters accepted through the program submissions process.

Poster authors will submit their posters using the correct commons category by end of day 31 August. Event organisers will print the posters and display them during the conference.

Poster authors are encouraged to include contact information on their poster where attendees can reach out with questions and feedback.

Poster author responsibilities

Create your poster and upload it to Commons category Language Diversity Conference 2026 posters by 31 August.
Submissions should fall into one of the conference themes of "Presence", "Ethics, advocacy for language support" or "Languages in the age of AI".
Poster authors who are conference attendees in Accra may be invited to stand with their posters during a poster session to discuss the topic in person with other attendees. More information to follow.
Poster authors who will be remote should include methods for contact on their poster, such as an email address and/or wiki page, so that attendees can get in touch after the conference with any thoughts or questions.

Poster creation instructions

All posters need to meet the following criteria;

Posters can be in more than one language.
Poster size/format: A1 (594 × 841 mm, or 23.4 × 33.1 inches), portrait/tall orientation.
All images are freely licensed with the author credited, the license information, and a url or short url to the file page on Commons or elsewhere. All images--photos, graphics, etc--must be properly attributed or you may be asked to redo the poster or have the poster refused. Remember, we set the standards we expect on reusing our content.
Limit the text used. Include one or more QR codes to link to more detailed information, reports, instructions, or presentation videos (e.g., on Wiki-Meta, Wikimedia Commons, etc.).
Deadline: We ask that all posters are uploaded to Wikimedia Commons by 31 August (inclusive). This allows time for review and printing.

Lay-out

Once attendees have chosen the topic they want for their poster, lay out the story in a way that lets other people know what happened, what were the key results, and what (if any) is their advice to the audience. They can also use the ABCDs of Storytelling as a guide to creating the poster. Find more detailed guidance at this Posters that work Learning Pattern, and also by looking at posters shown at previous Wikimedia events:

Suggested templates

There are many programs/templates the participant can use to create a poster. It is suggested that Microsoft PowerPoint, LibreOffice Presentation, and LibreOffice Draw are the easiest to use, and make good-looking posters. Other programs like Inkscape have more features, but they are also more difficult to learn, and tools like Adobe InDesign & Illustrator are expensive. Another option is to use Google Draw.

Whichever program/template the participant chooses, organizers request the participant to set the size of the poster before they start adding words and pictures. This will help the participant make sure that the fonts they are using are the right size, and that the pictures they include have a high enough resolution to print properly.

Here are some links that may help participants create a poster of the correct size:

Use of non-photo images

AI art

Commons does allow AI art, and in the US at least, art generated entirely by AI is considered uncopyrightable (public domain). But that can vary by country.

The case of Institutional logos

It is common for poster authors to showcase work done in partnership with other organizations. In this case, the poster author may wish use an institutional logo.

Technically, only institution logos that are freely licensed should be used (rare, outside of Wikimedia), or public domain due to them being either too simple to copyright (basic text and geometric shapes) or expired copyright (by being very old).

Most of the institution logos on that poster are simple or old enough to not be copyrightable (the Univerzita Karlova seal, for example, is from the 14th century! so public domain). But a few of the logos are complex enough to be copyrightable, like the Prague Zoo.

These are the main points related to the use of institutional logos:

The logos should be considered free, by either being freely licensed (rare), simple enough to be uncopyrightable (basic text and geometric shapes), or old enough to be public domain.
⁠If a logo is considered uncopyrightable, you don’t technically need attribution on the poster (and any attribution would usually be redundant anyway, since the organization itself is usually who you would attribute).
⁠If a logo is too complex, some institutions will also have a basic wordmark that is just text that could be used instead (and if they don’t, you could consider cropping the "complex" part out of the logo, as one could do with the Prague Zoo — though not ideal since the logo becomes a bit "unofficial" in that case).
⁠In an ideal world, any public domain/uncopyrightable logos used on the posters should also be independently uploaded on Commons (and these can be linked to in the "source" field in the description as good practice).

The team in charge of the poster session can still print and hang posters that use any institutional logo; the poster just may not be able to stay on Wikimedia Commons indefinitely if it doesn’t align with the above main points.

Besides copyright considerations, please keep in mind that some institutions may not approve the use of their logo unless the publication is approved by their legal department. So make sure to check whether the use of the brand material of the institution is acceptable or not. This may require some time, so make sure to secure enough time to figure the situation out.

Final step

Once the poster is complete, the participant must export it to PDF format and open it in a PDF reader to make sure that everything is displaying correctly. Some questions the participant might ask oneself are

Minimum requirements

Are my pictures blurry?
Have I properly attributed all media I've used?
Is my text aligned?
Is my text big enough to be clearly legible?
Is my text free of typos?
Have I used any materials that are copyrighted and thus need to be removed? As you will be uploading to Commons, please ensure all elements are available under a CC license.

Things to consider

Does my poster have text that explains what it means when the author is not around?
Is my poster overwhelmed with text? Try to include only the highlights so people can easily read it.
Are the pictures relevant?
Is the author(s) contact information clearly displayed?

Responsibilities

Create your poster and upload it to Language Diversity Conference 2026 posters by 31st August.
Be on the lookout for any feedback from reviewers on-wiki or via email and be prepared to upload a new version of your poster in the event that there are typos, missing attributions for photos, or other issues.
Poster authors do not need to print or hang their posters themselves, the event organisers will take care of that.

Resources