Poster Tips
A poster is a presentation in which materials such as maps, photographs, graphs, charts, and/or tables are posted on a display board along with brief textual summaries of your work. Ideally, a well-constructed poster will be self-explanatory. Successful poster presentations are those that achieve both coverage and clarity.
Coverage: In addition to title/author and abstract, most successful posters provide brief statements of introduction, method, subject, procedure, results, and conclusions. Ask yourself the following:
- Have you provided all the obvious information?
- Will a casual observer walk away understanding your major findings after a quick perusal of your material?
- Will a more careful reader learn enough to ask informed questions?
- What would you need to know if you were viewing this material for the first time?
Clarity: People attending a poster session are free to move about from poster to poster and often must view a poster from a distance, making it difficult to read excessive text and small fonts. With this in mind, we recommend you do the following:
- Use large fonts and limit text to essential information. Place your major points in the poster and save the nonessential, but interesting, sidelights for informal discussion.
- Keep content simple and communicate clearly.
- Consider whether the sequence of information is evident. Indicate the ordering of your material with numbers, letters, or arrows when necessary.
- “A picture’s worth a thousand words.” Imaginative use of captioned illustrations, photographs, graphs, or other types of visually appealing material is an extremely effective mode of communication in a poster presentation.
- Make your final conclusions or summary a concise statement of your most important findings.
Each poster display should include a lettered sign giving the title and name(s) of the presenter(s). This sign should be 6” in height with letters at least 2” high in a bold font.
Authors are provided a 7-foot-high (2134mm) x 3-foot-wide (915mm) bulletin board on which to display their poster. Authors must remain near the bulletin board for the duration of the session to answer questions.
Note: Poster presenters are not supplied with audiovisual equipment or electricity.
