2. Goals of the Poster
✤ Inform readers about your work
✤ Advertise your work
✤ Start a conversation!
3. Bad Posters
✤ Difficult to tell the main point
✤ Very small text
✤ Poor charts & pictures
✤ Badly organized
4. Focus
✤ A poster should be narrowly focused - try to carve a single message
from your research.
5. Visual
✤ It’s better for people to see your research on a poster than it is for
them to read it. This is because most academic conference attendees
are illiterate.
6. Structure
✤ A poster needs to be organized in two different ways: visually and
narratively.
✤ Visually there should be a clear connection from one part of
the poster to the next.
✤ Narratively, there should be a logical flow of ideas in the text,
charts, and pictures of the paper.
7. Important First Questions
✤ How much space do you have?
✤ Poster size limitations can vary from 3 x 4 feet, or 5 x 6 feet.
8. Important First Questions
✤ How much money do you have?
✤ It can get expensive printing a huge poster. Will it all be in
color? Will it be glossy? Where will you print it?
9. Important Questions
✤ Who is your audience?
✤ Don’t waste the time of professionals in your field by explaining
basics
✤ But don’t confuse interested amateurs when presenting to them.
10. Frame Your Message
✤ Get rid of any details that are not directly relevant to the main
message of the poster. They only take up space, and no one will
remember them.
11. Layout
✤ Columnar Layout. Decide what to emphasize.
12. Headings
✤ Each heading is like a newspaper headline. Someone should be able
to read it and get an idea of what the rest says.
13. Charts
✤ Make charts with good contrast with the background - and with an
easy to see relationship.
