By Andreia Gonçalves, Liliana Raimundo and Magdalena Ksiezarek
Posters are an important tool to communicate science. These are the 10 most important rules to make a GOOD POSTER!!
1. Grab people’s attention: Choose a good title
The title should reflect the most interesting finding or issue of your research
Simple and catchy, maximum two lines with big, visible letters
Use active verbs
Do not use all capital letters (NOT LIKE THIS)
Keep the audience attention: pose a question, define project scope, suggest a major finding
2. Opportunity to spread your work
Confirm that authors names and e-mail are well visible and easy to find
Besides affiliation put the logo of your university or other institution
Help people know more about you and your research: add your social media identificator or website of your research group
Advertise your work making available further information like QR code, URL (to access an electronic copy) and put some reference to redirect the reader to the work with more details about your project
Provide a simple handout with the small version of your poster
3. Outline
Organize your layout, with well-defined sections and a clear flow
Choose colors carefully. They should capture attention and highlight important information without distracting the viewer. Less is better!!!
Use colors that complement each other
Color background should contrast with the text. Choose light color in the first one
Font should be consistent and easy to read. Sans serif is frequently recommended
The text must be readable from 6-10 feet away
Organize information in columns and avoid text blocks longer than 10 sentences
Let it breathe. Don’t cram your poster full of information. You have a limited space to make a concise work description.
Make important information stand out as major findings and interesting points about your research
Always remember the S rule: Simple colors, Simple background, Simple font!!
4. Design your abstract and introduction
The abstract have to justify importance of project/ purpose of your investigation
Keep it brief and precise
Should fit in four to five sentences
Make sure the objectives are presented in a simple and clear way
5. Present your methods
Should provide credibility to your results - doesn’t need to be so detailed like in the paper
Explain well the procedures applied to perform your experiments, collect and analyze data
If possible present your methods graphically (e.g., flow charts)
Explain shortly statistical analysis used for data interpretation
6.Organize your data - results
Use charts and figures to support your data
Keep tables and charts simple and clear to understand
Incorporate images and diagrams when appropriate
Never forget to include headings, labels, scales and brief explanations for visuals
Visual (graphs, figures...) must be in PNG format with a resolution no more than 150 dpi
Images and figures should be above 13 cm x 15 cm
7.Summarize your effort - conclusions (discussion)
Make a brief statement of your most important results
Highlight the relevance and impact of your data
Refer your findings to literature to support their relevance
Give the audience clear idea of your findings which might be background for face-to-face discussion
8. To support your findings - references
Final column should contain references
Choose smartly and Keep references up to dare – only a few references to support abstract/introduction and discussion
Prepared to defend your work. You may speak with the audience about comparison of your work with other studies
After references make sure that you acknowledge everyone
9.Everything matter :)
Make sure that nothing on the poster will distract from your scientific message
Don’t let the audience feel overloaded: Keep text lines relatively short - your audience will be standing and reading
Remember that color composition, size and font of the text and background have to make text easy and pleasant to read
At conference, between hundreds of posters you will need to fight for attention, use graphic forms, photographs and tables to make your poster more attractive
To be ‘eye friendly’ 50% of the poster should be blank!
10. Review: outside perspective
Get feedback from co-authors and someone outside your project
Ask help to review aspects like format, flow, content and spelling/grammar
References:
Davis, M., Davis, KJ. & Dunagan, M.M. (2012). Chapter 17- Poster Presentation. Scientific Papers and Presentations (Third edition). 2012: 189-206. doi:10.1016/B978-0-12-384727-0.00017-3
The University of Texas at Austin. Guide to Creating Research Posters. accessed 20 January 2019 from https://ugs.utexas.edu/our/poster
Erran, T.C. & Bourne, P.E. (2007). Ten Simple Rules for a Good Poster Presentation. PLoS Computational Biology. 3(5): e102. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.0030102
This post was made by
Andreia Carina Martins Rebelo Gonçalves
Liliana Sofia Gomes Raimundo
Magdalena Ksiezarek
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