Designing the Best Posters

Communicating your research is an important part of presenting in a conference, and that is difficult to do without effective presentation aids. In this training, you will learn the best practices for creating and designing slides and posters.

Removing Everything Unnecessary

You don’t have a lot of space to work with on a poster, so you have to make sure everything that’s on there is important. The following list gives examples of what you don’t need, and why you don’t need it.

The abstract. Unless you are required by certain professional societies to include an abstract, it doesn’t make sense to include your abstract on your poster. Your poster is already a summary of your research; including another summary is redundant.
Background images. Although it may seem that having a large, visually attractive image as a background might draw attention to your poster and allow you to include an image without wasting space, it is generally a bad idea. These images tend to distract from the content of your poster without providing anything useful.
Mailing addresses. Nobody is going to be writing down your address at the session, so it’s a waste of space. When you want to provide your contact information, you should have business cards that you can hand out.
Drop shadows and bevels. These visual aspects not only make text less readable, but they force you to use more space for each element than otherwise necessary. The only time this is useful is when you are trying to make text over an image more visible.

Making Your Poster Understandable

In order to get the most out of a conference, people need to be able to understand what’s on your poster. Here are some tips for how you can make your content more understandable to the wide variety of people that may be reading it.

Get rid of jargon. If there are any words that are discipline-specific, switch them out for something more universal or be sure to clearly define them.
Reduce the content. People don’t have very much time to read everything on your poster, so it doesn’t make sense to include every detail. An optimal poster has 400 to 600 words, enough information to be detailed but leaving room for discussion, so pare down as much as possible. The easiest things to cut are often your methods section and any explanatory background research that is not your own.
Organize what’s left. Your content should read easily, making it clear where the reader should start and how they should progress through the poster. Certain layouts may cause confusion as to what order to read items in. Having someone else look over it and tell you what order they’re reading it in can help you make sure your layout is solid.

Drawing Attention with an Interesting Poster

In order to draw people in to read your poster, you have to grab their attention. Most of all, you don’t want to bore people. Here are a few tips to make sure your poster seems interesting.

Choose the right titles. You don’t have to be traditional, and something a little different can really help pull people in. Instead of “Intro,” “Methods,” and “Conclusion,” you can use something more descriptive and engaging to draw people in.
Use big images. Pictures help gain attention and are visually interesting. As long as they’re relevant, they are a great use of poster space.
Keep graphs simple. Like images, graphs are an exceptional way to demonstrate your research and keep your audience paying attention. The problem occurs when the graphs are too complicated. They should be easy to read and understand, so keep them as simple as possible.
Emphasize pull quotes. A pull quote is a piece of text that you take from your poster and enlarge. These quotes should be important or interesting parts of your research that you want to draw attention to. Not only do these help guide your readers to the most important and memorable information, but they make your poster more visually attractive.

Designing an Attractive Poster

Not only do you want your poster to be understandable and interesting, you need it to be attractive. When your poster looks nice, people will be more interested. Try these tips to make your poster more visually appealing.

Include calculated blank space. You don’t have a lot of space on a poster, so it’s tempting to try to cram as much information as possible into every nook and cranny. Don’t make this mistake. When you purposefully include blank space, it is easier to find, identify, and understand the information that is included. Increasing the space between columns or boxes or widening the margins inside of a box is an easy way to accomplish this.
Customize fonts. Using fonts that are professional and easy to read, but still a little bit different can help your poster stand out from the rest. You can have a different font for headings, captions, body text, and accent text, but you shouldn’t have more than that.
Use color. You can stand out from other posters by including aesthetically pleasing, complimentary colors instead of the standard light blue. When doing this, however, be careful to choose colors that aren’t too bright or difficult to read.

Additional Resources

Learn how to design stunning posters from these graduate training videos and handouts.

Extreme Makeover: Poster Edition

Watch Extreme Makeover: Poster Edition (video)

How To Design Stunning Posters

Part 1: Introduction
Watch How to Design Stunning Posters Part 1: Introduction (video)

Part 2: Poster Kryptonite
Watch How to Design Stunning Posters Part 2: Poster Kryptonite (video)

Part 3: Be Understandable
Watch How to Design Stunning Posters Part 3: Be Understandable (video)

Part 4: Be Interesting
Watch How to Design Stunning Posters Part 4: Be Interesting (video)

Part 5: Be Attractive
Watch How to Design Stunning Posters Part 5: Be Attractive (video)
Download How to Design Stunning Posters Handout (PDF)

Getting Smart About Posters and Slides

Download the Getting Smart About Posters and Slides Handout (PDF)