Poster
Poster presentations are a means of sharing your results with your colleagues. You can also use a poster presentation to get early feedback on your research line (in particular if you are presenting a pilot project). Poster presentations provide informal peer-review in order to develop, clarify and refine your work and also allow you to hear about what others in your field are doing. Check out this link for information about the history of scientific meetings.
The three papers and three websites below provide an amazing introduction and how-to for producing posters. Go through them in this order and for the following reasons:
For the quickest way to get into the producing your poster
- Erren & Bourne, 2007 - Provides 10 reasons and thinking points for why you present a poster
- Shelledy, 2004 - Provides a how-to for the content and format of your poster
- Craft of Scientific Posters - Provides design rules and templates (come back to this site and follow their link to Scientific Presentations when preparing to present
- Block, 1996 - Provides rules for how to put your poster together and how to present your poster
- The Perfect Poster - Provides an overview on how to design a poster to draw a crowd
- Step by Step: Scientific Poster Making - Provides step by step instructions for making a poster in powerpoint.
- How to design an award-winning conference poster - Provides an overview on designing a conference poster.
If you have more time check out these two more detailed sites:
- Ritchi Song - Scientific Literature and Writing - Examples, Formatting, and Tutorials
- Colin Purrington - Designing Conference posters - Extremely detailed from beginning to end. Great information
Why Posters
- An advertisement of your work
- Why should anyone care?
- What does your work add to the literature
- Can viewers understand what I did (the methods)
- Poster overview
- Think of your poster as a short story
- Describe just a few major points
- Spark questions in your viewers
- Less is more
- A poster in two elements
- 1) A simple display of data
- 2) Small blocks of supporting text
- Small details
- Size, space and visuals
- Photos/images should be 150-300DPI saved as PNG
- Use color to engage - but no more than 2-3
- Prepare a both a 30 second and 2 minute "elevator talk"
- Prepare mini-size poster handouts
- Include Acknowledgements
- Include contact info
References and Further Reading
Block, S.M. (1996). Do's and don'ts of poster presentation. Biophysical Journal, 71, 3527-3529.
Erren, T.C., & Bourne, P.E. (2007). Ten simple rules for a good poster presentation. PLoS Computational Biology, 3(5), e102.
Shelledy, D.C. (2004). How to make an effective poster. Respiratory Care, 49(10), 1213-1216.
Alley, M. Scientific posters. Retrieved from http://www.writing.engr.psu.edu/posters.html
Song, R. Poster presentations. Retrieved from http://people.eku.edu/ritchisong/posterpres.html
Price, M. The perfect poster. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/gradpsych/2011/01/poster.aspx
Purrington, C.B. Designing conference posters. Retrieved from http://colinpurrington.com/tips/poster-design
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