Tips for Designing A Poster
Poster size
The conference presenter guidelines should provide the size of your poster hanging board. Posters that are
larger than their corkboards are common problems at conferences. It makes the poster look unattractive,
wrinkles or warps the paper, and potentially blocks neighboring posters. Poster size may also be restricted
by the printer you use or by your poster design software (e.g. Powerpoint's max size is 56" x 56"), so learn
these restrictions before you start to design.
An explanation of posterboard sizes can be found in the "Organizing your poster" section above.
Sizes of each content section can vary considerably with each presenter's research content. However, in
general the "results" section should make up the greatest proportion of your poster's real estate. I like to
aim for my poster to have a max. of 1000 words total. Here is a rough word count for each section:
Title: 1-2 lines max.
Introduction: ~200 words
Aims/Objectives (if included): <100 words
Materials and Methods: ~200 words
Results: ~200 words not including figure captions
Conclusions: ~200 words
Acknowledgements: <100 words in a small font size
References: 5-10 citations in an extremely small font size
Helpful Tip!
Using bullet points rather than complete sentences is a great way to both save space and increase the
readability of your poster.
When choosing your font size, bigger is generally better. A rule of thumb for designers is that 30pt font is
visible from 6 feet away. Below I show my preferred font sizes for each poster section. I highly recommend
that you do not deviate much from these sizes!
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Content
Is the topic and its treatment appropriate for a poster? Excessive quantities of facts and particularly subtle
arguments tend not to be appreciated, especially if the author is not immediately available to act as guide.
Arrange the material in a logical sequence, and make sure the poster is self-contained if it will be on display
in the author's absence. It is helpful to start with a concise introduction and end with brief conclusions
particularly when the participants have an overwhelming choice competing for their attention.
Use of colour can be very helpful both in maximizing the clarity of diagrams and in making the poster
attractive.
The title should be bold and informative, of course. It is a good idea to design and position the title panel
last. A striking effect can be obtained from an awkward remaining space.
Some meetings and conferences ask that certain sections like abstracts, references, or funding logos be
displayed on all posters. If this is the case, and especially if your poster is being judged for a poster
competition, it is critical that you include these components. The guidelines may also tell you, for example,
that abstracts will be printed in the conference booklet, in which case they can be omitted from the poster
to save valuable space for your results.
Typical poster sections are:
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Title, author(s), and affiliation(s)
Abstract (include only if required)
Introduction
Objectives/Hypotheses/Aims/Questions
Materials and methods
Results
Conclusions
Acknowledgements
References (often required, but can be scaled down very small in size)
Contact Information
Storyboarding
The next step, and one that is often overlooked, is sketching your poster with a pencil and paper. This is
called storyboarding, and it provides the first, rough visualization of your poster’s contents. It should
contain no content or data; rather, it enables you to visualize the dimensions of your future product, and
provides a rough outline of the approximate proportions of space that will be devoted to each section.
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The final organizational step is transferring the hand-written storyboard to an electronic dummy or
template. A dummy uses filler text and filler images to
establish a rough visual layout that can later be filled in
with your actual content. By using filler text, you can
establish a word limit for each of your sections a priori,
write the content of these sections in a word processing
software, then quickly and easily transfer each written
section into its proper space. Similarly, you can
determine the dimensions of your figures and photos
ahead of time, crop and edit them in the program of
your choice, and fit them smoothly in place later. Poster
expert Colin Purrington provides several poster
templates on his website, linked here.
Photo credit: http://www.makesigns.com/tutorials/
Authors
Photographs can be useful in making contact at large international gatherings. When posters are on show
for extended periods, indicate when the authors will be in attendance.
Handouts
If you would like people to have a permanent record, have handouts available, either from the author or in
a folder attached to the poster board.
Layouts
"My posters always look terrible--I'm just not creative!"
Many scientists claim they're not "artsy" enough to make a good poster. But the honest truth is that this is
still an academic poster. You're there to present your science, not your creativity. While you do want your
poster to stand out at the conference, if the goal is simply to not look terrible, there are some simple
layout guidelines you can follow to accomplish that.
Guideline #1: Let it breathe
A common problem, like in the poster to the right, is that all of the poster's elements are crammed too
tightly into the space. It's natural to want to make the most of the limited space that you have, but
cramming everything in like this makes your poster look cluttered.
When you're making your poster, provide a wide gap between each element or section to the next, then
double that distance--it's almost always better to give too much breathing room than too little! The margin
around the entire poster should be at least 2 inches.
Guideline #2: Keep it lined up
Working on an invisible grid is one of the best things you can do to make your poster look more
professional. The poster on the left did a good job of lining up all the elements on the far left edge as well
as the far right edge, but the elements in the middle appear to be placed at random. This could easily be
converted into a clean, 2- or 3-column grid format to achieve a more professional look. Note also that
there are variable gap sizes between each of the poster's sections.
Guideline #3: Tell the reader where to go
By laying out your poster in an organized way, you can force your reader's eyes to travel where you want.
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Our natural tendency is to read from left to right, then top to bottom. In the poster on the left, notice how
your eyes start in the upper lefthand corner, but then there are no visual cues to tell you whether to go to
the right from there, or down the column. Read my section on creating a visual hierarchy to learn more
about controlling eye movement.
Text and tables
Artistic considerations favour the minimum of textual and tabular material, but scientific considerations
generally demand several paragraphs of text and one or more tables of results -- be as succinct as possible,
but not to the point of incomprehensibility.
Typescript is rather small to read, though quite satisfactory when no more than two or three readers are
present at once. Photographic enlargement of typescript improves legibility, though some typefaces look
rather unattractive when magnified. However, they still look infinitely better than the handwriting of 99
per cent of the scientific population.
Fonts
Font choice may seem petty in the grand scheme of things, but I've found that a good or bad font can
really make or break a poster. Below you'll find my three simple rules of font choice:
Rule #1: Be consistent
Once you've chosen a font for the section heading "Introduction", use the exact same font for all of your
other content section headings as well. Similarly, all of your photo and figure captions should use the same
font, and all of your main body text should use the same font. These fonts may differ from one section to
the other (see Rule #2), but they should remain consistent across each group.
Helpful tip!
Your main title should be written in unitalicized sentence case. In other words, only capitalize the first
word in the title. In doing so, you avoid potential confusion about capitalization in scientific names and
other proper nouns.
Rule #2: Stick to two complementary fonts
Many print designers like to pair one serif font with one sans serif font (see my Design 101 typography
section for the difference between these types), and use only those two fonts throughout their work. This
is a good rule to adopt for poster design, although I have also seen successful posters with just one or up to
three fonts choices.
On the left are some aesthetically-pleasing font choices for
titles/body text, adopted from MakeSigns.com's poster-making
guide. In general, I like to use the first font for my title and
section headings, and the second font for the author name and
the main body text. Either may be used for captions, but again,
stay consistent!
Rule #3: Say no to word art
Word art, drop shadows, and gradients are no-no's for scientific
conferences. Simply put, font styles like that on the right don't
convey a "professional" message. Similarly, so-called "designer"
fonts are inappropriate -- the font called Comic Sans is a
common culprit, and should be avoided!
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Figures and diagrams
These are to be preferred over text and tables wherever possible. Obviously it is a great help to have the
assistance of someone with an aptitude for technical drawings but in these days of stencils, expanding and
reducing Xerox machines, and computer graphics even the hamfisted scientist can produce neat and
attractive illustrative material.
• Avoid pulling photos off the Internet. Odds are, these photos will be low image quality, which
prints terribly when blown up on a large poster. Use your own pictures whenever possible, or limit
image searches to large sizes (at least 150 dpi but no larger than 300).
• Do NOT copy photos from the internet or other documents and paste them into your poster.
These photos may look fine at first, but they tend to become easily corrupted or print incorrectly
later. Instead, save these images to your computer and use the "import" or "place" tool in your
poster design software to insert it.
• Graphs and figures should be saved as PNGs before being imported. PNG is a good file type for
images with lots of text and lines, with little risk that they will look pixelated.
• Pictures should be saved as TIFFs before being imported. TIFFs tend to produce good quality
images when printed on large posters. If file size gets too big, however, JPGs are OK and generally
smaller.
• Using a large picture for the background of your poster can cause serious legibility problems. In
general, I recommend using a solid colour for your background rather than a photo.
• If you really want to use a picture as your poster's background, never print text directly on the
photo.
• When resizing graphics, hold the shift key while pulling the corner vertices. This should prevent the
image from stretching or becoming distorted.
• I recommend putting a thin border around each picture and figure. Note that lines less than 2 pts
in width may not appear in print.
• Consider that resizing your graphs and figures may render the type on the title, legend, and axes
too small.
Colours
• Font colour must contrast highly with its background -- I always recommend black type on a light,
muted background colour.
• Beware of limited legibility with bright colours and complementary colour pairs, which strain the
eyes (see right).
• Consider also people who may not be able to distinguish between colours. It is likely that 10% of
your male audience, for example, suffers from red-green colour blindness.
• Whenever possible, I like to use the "eyedropper" tool offered by many design software programs,
which allows you to pull a colour out of a picture and apply it to parts of your poster. Suppose, for
example, that your poster uses several pictures from your fieldwork on the beach. This tool would
allow you to pull the cream colour from the beach sand to be used as your poster's background
colour, and the blue colour of the ocean to be used as the title's font colour.
• Use a site like kuler.adobe.com to pick a colour palette and stick to those 3-5 colours throughout.
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Be aware of the subconscious message you may be sending your audience. Many colours are
associated with certain feelings. Blue and green, for
example, are the colours most often used for doctors' and
surgeons' scrubs, because those colours convey relaxation
and loyalty; they are a good choice for posters. Bright reds
and yellows, on the other hand, can induce anxiety, which
may stem from the aposematic red and yellow colouration
of venomous animals.
Avoid excessive use of gradients and patterns, which do
not convey a professional message.
PRINTING AND PRESENTING
Critique a draft before printing
• About a month before the conference, it is critical that you receive edits to your poster from
friends and colleagues (helpful tip: graduate students respond well to bribes of free food). Ask
them to edit miniature versions, or display the poster on a large conference room screen and have
them place notes with post-its.
• Solicit comments on your poster through the internet. One Flickr community, Pimp My Poster,
provides critical feedback from either strangers (probably more helpful) or friends, depending on
your privacy settings.
• Posters generally print with fewer issues when they are exported to pdf format before going to the
printer.
• Print a small version of your poster on paper like the type you will ultimately print on (matte,
semiglossy, or glossy) to see how the colours look -- colours often look quite different in print than
they did on the screen!
Printing
• I recommend printing on semiglossy paper if possible. Ultraglossy or laminated posters reflect too
much light and cannot be read from a distance, and matte paper tends to get soggy easily.
• Use your school's printing services, if available, to get the best price. At Ohio State, for example, I
was able to print 2 matte posters for $24 through the library. Places like FedEx Office will also print
posters, but charge a significant fee ($130 for a 36"x48" poster at last check!). If your school does
not have a printing service, the best alternative is an online business like makesigns.com, which
can even ship your poster directly to the conference hotel. Note, however, that these should be
sent at least a week in advance.
Traveling and Presenting
• Always travel with your poster safely inside a plastic or cardboard tube. If you don't, expect your
poster to arrive at the conference wet, torn, and wrinkled.
• Poster sessions are a great place to network, so print business cards and have them on-hand while
you're presenting.
• Dress to impress! If you get really ambitious, you can even dress in the same colours you used on
the poster.
• Prepare a 3-5 minute speech about your poster and practice it several times before the
conference. Note, however, that you may not get to use the speech at all! Many people like to
have conversations at poster sessions rather than listen to a talk.
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