Poster Presentations: Design Tips

• Title
  • A title that describes your conclusion or question in non-technical terms will attract more viewers to your poster.
• Introduction
  • A statement that gives a quick overview of your poster. Include relevant background to provide a context for understanding the central question or theme of your poster. Define acronyms if you use them, and avoid lab jargon.
• Objectives, Aims, Goals, or Problem
  • A concise statement of the goal, question, or problem. Include an hypothesis, if appropriate.
• Methods
  • ​​​​​​​A brief description, diagram, or flow chart representing each key process or procedure used to test the hypothesis.
• Results
  • ​​​​​​​Describe the data collected and the methods used to analyze the data. Photographs, tables, or graphs should be as large as possible, easily interpreted, and labeled with a caption or figure legend.
• Conclusions
  • ​​​​​​​Provide a summary, discuss significance of results, and key conclusions. Do the results support or not support the hypothesis?
• References
  • ​​​​​​​Cite key publications in the text of your poster and list the references here. Include sources of any images or other materials used in the poster.
• Acknowledgements
  • ​​​​​​​Thank the individuals, programs, and funding sources that contributed to the research.

Take a look at this example. This poster contains a bold title, clearly defined sections, images, graphs, and charts that relate to the research, and some light aesthetic touches such as a color gradient background. Posters should be engaging and interesting but simplicity is key!

Choose appropriate fonts and font sizes. Use common font types, such as Times New Roman or Arial. If you use an unusual font, or a non-postscript font, it can cause problems when your poster is converted to a .pdf format for printing. Use the following guidelines, to make your poster easy to read at a distance:

• Title 90-150 point bold
• Author 36-42 point bold
• Section Headings (Sub-titles) 36-54 point bold
• Main Text 28-32 point
• References & Acknowledgements 18-28 point
• 30 point font size will accommodate 250 words per square foot.
• TEXT AND TITLES WRITTEN ENTIRELY IN CAPITALS ARE HARDER TO READ for ease of reading, nothing beats black text on a light background.

Colors and backgrounds should be subtle. Color should highlight, separate, define and associate information. If it begins to compete with your information for attention, then it is too strong. Color works best as a background element, such as a field against which text is set, rather than as a foreground element itself. Colored text is often harder to read than the same words in black. Just setting headings in color does not necessarily mean that they will be more noticeable than the text surrounding them. Small text set in color is hardest to read of all.

Be aware that colors look different on your screen than they will in print. In general, a color will appear lighter on the screen than in print. So, select a lighter color than you think you need for your background if you are using black text.