Put your poster’s central focus in the title’s first few words to draw attention to it. Keep title length down to 2 lines Authors names go here Affiliations may be listed here on this line Introduction Go to content/uploads/2011/09/scientific-poster-advice-purrington.pdf and read every single word on Dr. Colin Purrington’s teaching poster. Take notes. content/uploads/2011/09/scientific-poster-advice-purrington.pdf Then go to his poster design website at and read that too. Finally – read every word on this template. It is also chock full of good advice. When you are done, do a “save as” of this template, setting the print dimensions to the correct size for your conference (see poster size tutorial at Resize the text boxes as needed, and insert your own content, following Dr. P’s design advice slavishly. His science posters win rave reviews. Methods Resize the boxes in this column to fit the relative amount of space you need for Introduction vs. Methods. Choose a font size large enough so that the printed poster can easily be read from 6-10 feet away. If people have to stand closer than that to read all the words, you are using too many words. See this website for tips on poster text font sizes: projects/project_display_board_fonts.shtml Put at least 15 pts of white space between paragraphs. The information in the program and the information on your poster do not usually need to be identical. Put maximum information in the program, not on the poster. Outline / summarize your methods only and, if necessary, provide handouts with more information in an attached manila envelope. Results Your poster’s primary purpose is to be visually interesting and easy to comprehend at a glance because if it ISN’T, it will never get a chance to achieve its secondary purpose of communicating your science. One trick … use graphics (pictures, graphs, tables, and figures); they can grab attention and encapsulate or emphasize your data. But be warned -- if a graphic doesn’t make immediate sense to a casual reader, it is hurting, not helping your presentation. For example, do not ask readers to slog through reams of data on your tables. Believe it or not, other people do not find the minutiae of your data nearly as interesting as you do. Use formatting to emphasize the important cells so that key data really jump out at table scanners. When creating graphics remember that up to 10% of men are red-green color blind; try to avoid these color combinations in graphs, figures, and tables: Green & red; Blue-green & grey; Bright/light green & yellow; Pale pink & grey; Red & brown; Blue & purple/lilac. Also see: need-to-understand-color-blindness/ for additional tips on how to make your graphs and charts easy for color blind people to see. need-to-understand-color-blindness/ Finally, spellcheck will not catch misspellings like “their” when you meant “there.” Proofread!!! Better yet, have someone who didn’t have any role in putting the poster together proofread it. S/he will see things that have become invisible to you through having read it so many times. BTW: There is a fabulous and funny infographic on the most common misspelled words at Key Findings Your key finding should include the most interesting / significant results you have to offer. I.e. the results you want people to remember Use a bullet point list instead of paragraphs of text. Put at least 15pt of white space between bullet points Graphics are good to use if they will help make your key findings more understandable/memorable Conclusions The boxes in this column can be resized to fit the relative amount of space you need for Key Findings vs. Conclusions. Conclusions are NOT a restatement of key findings. Instead, they say what you have concluded from the findings and what you think should be done next. Bear in mind that many people read the conclusions section first so lead with the most compelling point(s) and make certain that it is not necessary for someone to have read the results section first in order for your conclusions to make sense. Grant support information will go here. Include P30AI (All illustrations on this poster are from Creative Commons) Figure 3. An eye-catching photo or figure is always good. But only if it sends the right message about your key findings. Which this one may not. Figure 2. This may be an accurate picture of the widespread awe that met your results, but it does not make a good poster image. The impact is lost on color blind people. Figure 1. A picture is worth a thousand words. Use a photo, drawing, or figure to illustrate your methodology. Abstract #