How to make a good quality poster? - 6 quick points to remember

Esther’s perspective

Esther grabbed a cup of Cappuccino swiftly, and rushed down the corridor towards her next chemistry lecture. She saw posters on either side of the corridor, and wondered how on earth people create impressive posters despite the limited space. She has neither made one before on her own, nor had seen anyone present their posters so far.

Then she got to read these points derived from the February monthly meeting of the Postgraduate Community in the School of Natural Sciences, University of Hull. Then she felt she had acquired the essential tips on poster-making, as a beginner.

What makes a good poster then?

1. Visibility

• Stick with darker colors (black or blue) for the text on a lighter background, and lighter colors (white or yellow) for darker background.
• Use color combinations such as - BLUE and RED (in place of RED, ORANGE also works), but avoid using combinations like RED and GREEN, as they are not very vision-friendly.
• Maintain the font size no smaller than 20 - 24 points. The font size in the reference section can be made smaller.

2. Seek attention

• Keep your TITLE simple and clear and avoid too many technical jargons. The title should stimulate the curiosity of the viewer.
• Use additional visual elements to add to the content of the poster (images on laptop/tablet; samples; devices etc.).
• Tailor the whole poster-making process to the audience, i.e., consider the audience’s existing level of subject knowledge.

3. Organization

• Keep texts as minimum as possible.
• Avoid large blocks of text. Use short sentences separated by equally parted spaces to break the text.
• Don’t spill too many beans of your unpublished results on the public forums such as international conferences, and keep the details as minimal as possible, for obvious reasons.

4. Tech and Paper aid

• Create a QR code for your poster to let the curious minds know more about your research.
• Try creating a paper artwork relevant to your subject area, to demonstrate some practical aspects.
• To name a few drawing or image creation tools (websites and applications) -Inkscape, CorelDraw and Illustrator.

5. Affiliations and acknowledgements

• Include the name and official logo of the University (affiliations) and the funding (grants) institutions.
• Ensure that the poster has been approved by all the involved co-authors before the poster is finalized.
• Add acknowledgements to people who have directly or indirectly been a part of the presented work.

6. Presenting the poster

• Be enthusiastic or pretend to be enthusiastic in your tone and body language, to carry out stimulating scientific conversations.
• Stick to answer the questions in precise snippets, try not to digress on small details unless specifically asked.
• Make sure you have a summary prepared. The summary should include a few sentences of background to the research (why we are doing this) an outline of the experiments carried out and an outline with the results with relevant comments. Then let people ask you the questions they are interested in.
• Make sure to invite the people of your interest specifically beforehand.

Acknowledgements

First and best thanks to GOD. Many thanks to Prof. Carl Redshaw, host supervisor for giving me an opportunity to work in his research group at the University of Hull, as a visiting researcher under the Utrecht Network Young Researchers’ Grant.

Special thanks and whole credits to Dr. Maria Grazia Francesconi for organizing this so well, and the presenter of the talk - Dr. Sam Richardson for sharing the insights from her rich experience filled PhD years.

Thanks to everyone who took their time out to give this a read.

This article is written by Janaki Devi Somasundaram, Visiting Research Scholar from Professor Carl Redshaw’s group, and a PhD Student (Chemistry) from Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia [email protected] [email protected]