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Tips for a great scientific poster

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What is the goal of a poster?

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What is the goal of a poster?

Posters serve as …a source of informationa conversation startera summary of your workan advertisement of your work

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What do you want to show?

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What do you want to show?

• It’s an enormous question, so take the next 4 steps:

• 1) Write down the theme of your poster will be. Make it one sentence. And reduce it to a noun

• 2) Write down what you want to achieve,like: “tell the audience about the history of cars” or “show our research on oil”

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• 3) make questions with the theme in mind:What is it? What are the best parts? How many people

use it? How long has it been around?

• 4) Put them in the right order. What is most important? What is most crucial?

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Use the right balance

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Use the right balance

Get your message across with effective visual displays of data and small blocks of supporting text.

Think of your poster as an illustratedabstract.

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Keep your audience in mind

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Keep your audience in mind

• Think about: who is your audience? What will attract their attention?

• Maybe only students will be there but there might be some professors present. Your poster might be meant for an elementary school… your audience is crucial.

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Content:

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Content:

• Tell readers why your work matters, what you did, what you found, and what you recommend.

• Avoid excessive focus on methods – it’s the results and implications that count!

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Colour

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Colour

• Use color cautiously. Dark letters on light background are easiest to

• read. Stick to a theme of 2-3 colors. Avoid overly bright colors – they

• attract attention but wear out reader’s eyes.

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Must haves for your poster

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Must haves for your poster

• 1. Title• 2. The main question• 3. Research method• 4. The most important results• 5. Conclusions• 6. Full contact information. You want to be found –

the reader should not have to look up anything to find you

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Show the cohesion

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Show the cohesion

• 1. Use lines and arrows to show how the parts are related

• 2. Use numbers if needed• 3. Use figures and tables• 4. Give the figures and the tables clear titles• 5. Use legends

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And …..

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And …..

• What is your core message? What do you really really want to tell people? Keep that in mind while creating every part of your poster

• Keep it short: only 10 to 20 lines of text in a box. And rather 10 than 20.

• Illustrate!

• Make the names of the paragraphs interessting • KISS keep it short and simple

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Tips for a great scientific poster

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References:

• Frontpage: https://www.flickr.com/photos/brianauer/2402882692

• Goal: https://www.flickr.com/photos/angietorres/4564135455/in/

• Balance: https://www.flickr.com/photos/86639298@N02/8560840624/

• Show: https://www.flickr.com/photos/4nitsirk/14707997759/

• Audience: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jesuspresley/6922073675/

• Content: https://www.flickr.com/photos/10ch/3347658610/

• Colours: https://www.flickr.com/photos/kaneda99/206508326/

• Must: https://www.flickr.com/photos/taylar/3449004611/

• Cohesion: https://www.flickr.com/photos/olyvia-nodsle/3051524662/

• & https://www.flickr.com/photos/bjornmeansbear/4836568068/

• George Hess / NC State University / Raleigh NC 27695-8008

• www4.ncsu.edu/~grhess george_hess@ncsu.edu © 2014

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