tutorial on creating academic posters

Creating a visual medium for communicating your research

Making Effective Academic Posters

Dr. Julie [email protected]

Tuesday, 26 February 13

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

OverviewPart 1:

Understanding your audience

Sorting out your message

Poster design principles

Part 2:

Things to avoid

Lo-Fi approaches

Interactive poster making


The Problem With Posters

Aims and Objectives too small or hard to find

Text too small and information disorganised

Inappropriate use of graphics/clip art

Poor quality figures and images

Lack of narrative

Poor structure/organisation


A poster is an illustrated Abstract


Understanding some basic principles

Understanding your audience and the purpose of the poster presentation

Develop an effective style for poster production

Produce stunning looking posters

Communicate your research effectively

Maximise your impact at poster sessions


A Caveat!

Good poster design cannot compensate for poor content

A frame should not be more beautiful than the painting itself


Why Make A Poster?A poster session can be an excellent method of disseminating your research to a broad audience

An effective poster operates on multiple levels:

summary of your work

conversation starter

advertisement of your research

Get your main point across to many people


Effective Posters Are...

Focused: aim to get across a single message

Graphical: use visual components not lots text

Organised: correctly ordered as to tell a story

Deciding on the message is often the most crucial step as this dictates how you create your poster


Getting that take home message

Be bold: a poster is a one-shot chance to potentially impress your future reviewers, even your future external examiner! Make it count!

Boil your research down to 4/5 keywords

Think about coming up with an acronym (works well for research funding titles too!)

Make the strongest claims you can and promote those important results


Work on a Clear Message

Create a mock-up poster focused on your main message.

Ask yourself which details are absolutely essential for conveying your message. The most common problem is too much focus on methods/implementation details

Edit text carefully - simplify verbiage, reduce sentence complexity

What would be your one sentence poster?


Accessibility

Who will be in your audience

researchers in your field

researchers in a related field

researchers not in your field at all


Appeal to all types? Provide context for your work. Explain the big picture and why the problem is important

Use plain uncomplicated terms

Avoid jargon and acronyms

unless you're really positive that yours will be a specialist-only audience.

Interpret your findings so that readers in all categories can understand how your work helps solve the problem you've described.


Design Sins Ahoy!

Background image is distracting

Text box backgrounds are dark, different colours & widths, no white space and are misaligned

Text justified, which causes bad inter-word spacing.

Logos crowd the title, filling in random left over parts

Title perspective is annoying (unless you like Star Wars).

Title is in all caps and italicised


There’s More...Author font and colour is loud and annoying (comic sans should be reserved for comic books).

Too much text including results are presented in sentences instead of visually with charts.

Section headers have more than one type of formatting

Terrible graphic of Guinea pig on scale and so looks blurry

Abstract section should be banned from posters.

Plus the science is terrible!


Poster Design Principles

Planning & Focus

Layout

Headings & Text

Graphics & Colours

Editing


Planning & Message

Usually done 2 hours before the printer’s deadline, 22hrs before you catch a flight for 6000 miles

Always rushed and elementary mistakes

If you have coauthors you need to factor in time for proofing and approval

A poster is equally as challenging as an oral presentation to get right


Things you need to know

What size am I allowed to take?

no use taking an A0 poster for an A2 poster board

Does my supervisor’s budget allow me to print a glossy colour poster or can I use a LoFi approach?

always discuss production with your supervisor

Start your poster at least 4 weeks before you will need it from your preliminary drawings


Paper sizes


Make a ‘Wireframe’


...or be more inventive.

TITLE

WEB Information

Names

Aims

Method

results

conc’s


Do not underestimate...

...the power of post-it notes!


Assemble your main elements

Headings and Data displays, based on your abstract

use your graphs and figures to drive the layout

remember: LESS IS BEST!

Decide where you will put small blocks of supporting text

aim for about 250 words on your poster

Poster title - THINK BIG!


Use your zoom to create multilayer posters

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www.ima.ac.uk

Aims

Method

results

conc’s

Nice big title

also important is your affiliation


http://www.ima.ac.uk

http://www.ima.ac.uk

Using whitespace, do not fear!!

Its okay to leave some space in your poster!

it can help guide the eye on a visual journey

Leave breathing space around your text

Plain fonts even serif here

Same size and style of font family for all sections

Left-aligned and NOT justified text - why?


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To justify or not to justify?


Justified is not justified Many of us get invited to present our work via the medium of a poster presentation at a conference or research symposium. Experience has shown that a little power point knowledge can be dangerous, with poor design renders some attempt useless. Over use of text and lack of narrative plague poster presentations. In this mini workshop we will cover designing effective poster layout, using colour appropriately, images and graphics and poster narrative.


Serif and Sans FontsFor larger bits of text its better to use a serif rather than a sans serif font

Serif have the little extra ‘twiddly bits’ on the ends of letters

Serif: Times, Caslon, Garamond, Baskerville, Rockwell (block serif)- I do like rockwell :)

Sans-serif: Gill Sans, Helvetica, Verdana - good for titles


Include Contact Info

Everyone’s names from the abstract

Postal and email address

Website address

IMA Logo

University of Nottingham logo (top right)


USE THE RIGHT LOGO!!


Must use this version, no exceptions!


Dont forget who funded you

EPSRC

BBSRC

MRC

Include grant numbers


Colour is important

Help highlight text

Attract the eye

Make a design look polished

Beware of abuse! Dont want to trigger any latent acid flashbacks!


Basic Colour Use

Use two or three colours, no more!

Avoid Rainbow effects as they look really cheesy

Dark text on a light background is the most readable

Certain colours go well with other colours, some really don’t work


Whoa!!


Beware of equal contrasts

Red on blue looks well blurry

So does blue on red!

Yellow is just difficult for text

You got a christmas thing going on


Try to pick complimentaries


Paper Saturation

If you chose to use all dark colours remember that this will consume a lot more ink

costs more for more ink

need a higher quality paper to support it

more chance of poster being ‘sticky’

risk of smudging

As you develop your poster keep printing proofs out


Graphs and Images

These visual components should be the highlight of your poster

Simplify and declutter your graphs for a clearer presentation

Self Contained with a detailed caption

0

25

50

75

100

2007 2008 2009 2010

Region 1 Region 2


Pie Charts are OUT!

200720082009201020112012


Avoid Boxes and Borders A strong temptation to put boxes around text

Use whitespace and ‘gestalt’ effect to trick the eye into seeing the box that isnt there


Introduction!This template has column widths and font sizes optimized for printing a 36 x 56� poster—just replace the �tips� and �blah, blah, blah� repeat motifs with actual content, if you have it. Try to keep your total word count under 500 (really). More tips can be found at �Designing conference posters� at

http://colinpurrington.com/tips/academic/posterdesign

To see examples of how others have abused this template to fit their presentation needs, perform a Google search for �colin purrington poster template.�

Your main text is easier to read if you use a �serif� font such as Palatino or Times (i.e., people have done experiments and found this to be the case). Use a non-serif font for your title and section headings.

Materials and methods

Be brief, and opt for photographs or drawings whenever possible to illustrate organism, protocol, or experimental design. Viewers don’t want to read about the gruesome details, however fascinating you might find them.

Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah.

Acknowledgments!We thank I. Güor for laboratory assistance, Mary Juana for seeds, Herb Isside for greenhouse care, and M.I. Menter for questionable statistical advice. Funding for this project was provided by the Department of Thinkology, a Merck summer stipend, and the person who claims she’s my mom. [Note that people’s titles are omitted. Titles are TMI.]

Results!The layout for this section should be modified from this template to best show off your graphs and other result-related illustrations. You might want a single, large column to accommodate a big map. Or perhaps you could arrange 6 figures in a circle in the center of the poster. Do whatever it takes to make your results graphically clear. And, for the love of God (or whoever), make your graphs big enough to read from 6� away.

Paragraph format is fine, but sometimes a simple list of �bullet� points can communicate results more effectively:

•  9 out of 12 brainectomized rats survived (fig. 3a) •  Brainectomized rats ate less (fig. 3b) •  Control rats completed maze faster, on average,

than rats without brains (fig. 3c) (t = 9.84, df = 21, p = 0.032)

Conclusions!You can, of course, start your conclusions in column #3 if your results section is �data light.�

Conclusions should not be mere reminders of your results. Instead, you want to guide the reader through what you have concluded from the results. What is the broader significance? Why should anyone care? This section should refer back, explicitly, to the �burning issue� mentioned in the introduction. If you didn’t mention a burning issue in the introduction, go back and fix that -- your poster should have made a good case for why you did what you did. A good conclusion will also refer to the literature on the topic -- how does your research add to what is already published on the topic?

Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah.

Your name(s) here Your address(es) here"

Literature cited!Bender, D.J., E.M Bayne, and R.M. Brigham. 1996. Lunar

condition influences coyote (Canis latrans) howling. American Midland Naturalist 136:413-417.

Brooks, L.D. 1988. The evolution of recombination rates. Pages 87-105 in The Evolution of Sex, edited by R.E. Michod and B.R. Levin. Sinauer, Sunderland, MA.

Scott, E.C. 2005. Evolution vs. Creationism: an Introduction. University of California Press, Berkeley.

Society for the Study of Evolution. 2005. Statement on teaching evolution. < http://www.evolutionsociety.org/statements.html >. Accessed 2005 Aug 9.

Figure 2. Illustration of important piece of equipment, or perhaps a flow chart summarizing experimental design. Scanned, hand-drawn illustrations are usually preferable to computer-generated ones. Just bribe or flirt with an artist to get them to help you out."

Figure 3. Make sure legends have enough detail to explain to the viewer what the results are, but don�t go on and on. Donʼt be tempted to reduce font size in figure legends, axes labels, etc.—your viewers are probably most interested in reading your figures and legends! "

Often you will have some more text-based results between your figures. This text should explicitly guide the reader through the figures.

Blah, blah, blah (Figs. 3a,b). Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah.

Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah (Fig. 3c). Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah (data not shown).

Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah (God, personal communication).

For further information!Please contact [email protected]. More information on this and related projects can be obtained at www.yoursite.edu… (give the URL for laboratory web site). A link to an online, PDF-version of the poster is nice, too.

Remember: no period after journal name (unless you use abbreviation)."

Figure 4. Label the lines manually (as above) and then delete the silly key provided by your charting software. The above figure would also be greatly improved if I had the ability to draw mini rats with and without brains."

Figure 5. You can use connector lines and arrows to visually guide viewers through your results. Adding emphasis this way is much better than making the point with words in the text section. Especially useful for when you cannot be at poster to guide viewer."

Be sure to separate figures from other figures by generous use of white space. When figures are too cramped, viewers get confused about which figures to read first and which legend goes with which figure. Cramped content just looks bad, too."

Figures are preferred but tables are sometimes unavoidable. A table looks best when it is first composed within Microsoft Word, then �Inserted� as an �Object.� If you can add small drawings or icons to your tables, do so!

unpithed"

pithed"

The presence of this band confirms that X is true."

Maze difficulty index"

Time (s)"

Pithed rats took longer to navigate maze!

I sure wish I�d presented my theory with a poster before I

wrote my book."

Put a figure here that explores one particular outcome in a complicated (and boring) table of results."

Format in �sentence case.� This means only the �t� in �title� gets capitalized."

All columns should have exactly the same width and be separated from each other by exactly the same amount of white space. "

Hi. If you’ve found this poster helpful, please consider sending me a postcard from wherever you are presenting your poster. It makes me feel like a have friends. Colin Purrington, Dept of Biology, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA 19081, USA.

Title that hints at the underlying issue or question!

Putting titles on graphs makes your graph instantly understandable to your viewers. E.g., just TELL your viewer whatʼs so cool or important about the graph…donʼt make them hunt for it."

Figure 1. Photograph or drawing of organism, chemical structure, or whatever…that might help lure people to your poster. Yes, I risked my life getting this photograph."

Adhere to citation guidelines in your field exactly. People will find your mistakes. Trust mee."


http://colinpurrington.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/postertemplate.pdf

http://colinpurrington.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/postertemplate.pdf

Introduction

Albert Einstein describes insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. This leads us to the question of why do we see researchers analysing clonal selection on the iris dataset time and time again?

use imaginarywhitespaceto creategood layout


Images and Backgrounds

Use high resolution images for print media (200dpi)

Many images from the web will be in 72pt resolution

Can create a background canvas image

Beware of busy backgrounds detracting from your groundbreaking scientific results!


Narrative

Arrange your content in a Z shape

Put additional information along the bottom

Follow your sections through to make a mental map of your poster information

The reader should be ‘led’ through the information


The eye path


Putting it all together

Decided on a message to use throughout

Created a nice layout, avoiding using boxes

Chosen your figures, images and have the right res

Decorated with an appropriate splash of colour

EDIT, EDIT, EDIT - get rid of all your extraneous text!


Software

Powerpoint is commonly used - set canvas size

Adobe Illustrator/ InDesign are my weapons of choice

now available in A32 on selected machines and on all machines in C11

Photoshop is better for raster graphics -why?

Inkscape is very powerful vector graphics for linux


Do you need a printed poster?

Sometimes we go to conferences that are far away

Dont want to have to carry an A0 poster tube

likely to forget it or have to check it as extra baggage

You can do the same by deciding which sections you want and print your abstract out on several pieces of A4 and pinning them up - the cheap LOFI approach


How to present

You must prepare what you are going to say

Do a 1 sentence, 1 minute and 5 minute summary as a set piece, you can practice

Decide how you are going to use your poster as a visual aid

Top tip: print out some mini handouts in A5

Just as important as the design is the delivery


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References

http://www.ncsu.edu/project/posters/CreatePosterLayout.html

http://www.cns.cornell.edu/documents/ScientificPosters.pdf

http://www.colorschemer.com/online.html










