tutorial on creating academic posters
TRANSCRIPT
Creating a visual medium for communicating your research
Making Effective Academic Posters
Dr. Julie [email protected]
Tuesday, 26 February 13
OverviewPart 1:
Understanding your audience
Sorting out your message
Poster design principles
Part 2:
Things to avoid
Lo-Fi approaches
Interactive poster making
Tuesday, 26 February 13
Tuesday, 26 February 13
The Problem With Posters
Aims and Objectives too small or hard to find
Text too small and information disorganised
Inappropriate use of graphics/clip art
Poor quality figures and images
Lack of narrative
Poor structure/organisation
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A poster is an illustrated Abstract
Tuesday, 26 February 13
Understanding some basic principles
Understanding your audience and the purpose of the poster presentation
Develop an effective style for poster production
Produce stunning looking posters
Communicate your research effectively
Maximise your impact at poster sessions
Tuesday, 26 February 13
A Caveat!
Good poster design cannot compensate for poor content
A frame should not be more beautiful than the painting itself
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Why Make A Poster?A poster session can be an excellent method of disseminating your research to a broad audience
An effective poster operates on multiple levels:
summary of your work
conversation starter
advertisement of your research
Get your main point across to many people
Tuesday, 26 February 13
Tuesday, 26 February 13
Effective Posters Are...
Focused: aim to get across a single message
Graphical: use visual components not lots text
Organised: correctly ordered as to tell a story
Deciding on the message is often the most crucial step as this dictates how you create your poster
Tuesday, 26 February 13
Getting that take home message
Be bold: a poster is a one-shot chance to potentially impress your future reviewers, even your future external examiner! Make it count!
Boil your research down to 4/5 keywords
Think about coming up with an acronym (works well for research funding titles too!)
Make the strongest claims you can and promote those important results
Tuesday, 26 February 13
Work on a Clear Message
Create a mock-up poster focused on your main message.
Ask yourself which details are absolutely essential for conveying your message. The most common problem is too much focus on methods/implementation details
Edit text carefully - simplify verbiage, reduce sentence complexity
What would be your one sentence poster?
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Accessibility
Who will be in your audience
researchers in your field
researchers in a related field
researchers not in your field at all
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Appeal to all types? Provide context for your work. Explain the big picture and why the problem is important
Use plain uncomplicated terms
Avoid jargon and acronyms
unless you're really positive that yours will be a specialist-only audience.
Interpret your findings so that readers in all categories can understand how your work helps solve the problem you've described.
Tuesday, 26 February 13
Tuesday, 26 February 13
Tuesday, 26 February 13
Tuesday, 26 February 13
Design Sins Ahoy!
Background image is distracting
Text box backgrounds are dark, different colours & widths, no white space and are misaligned
Text justified, which causes bad inter-word spacing.
Logos crowd the title, filling in random left over parts
Title perspective is annoying (unless you like Star Wars).
Title is in all caps and italicised
Tuesday, 26 February 13
There’s More...Author font and colour is loud and annoying (comic sans should be reserved for comic books).
Too much text including results are presented in sentences instead of visually with charts.
Section headers have more than one type of formatting
Terrible graphic of Guinea pig on scale and so looks blurry
Abstract section should be banned from posters.
Plus the science is terrible!
Tuesday, 26 February 13
Poster Design Principles
Planning & Focus
Layout
Headings & Text
Graphics & Colours
Editing
Tuesday, 26 February 13
Planning & Message
Usually done 2 hours before the printer’s deadline, 22hrs before you catch a flight for 6000 miles
Always rushed and elementary mistakes
If you have coauthors you need to factor in time for proofing and approval
A poster is equally as challenging as an oral presentation to get right
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Things you need to know
What size am I allowed to take?
no use taking an A0 poster for an A2 poster board
Does my supervisor’s budget allow me to print a glossy colour poster or can I use a LoFi approach?
always discuss production with your supervisor
Start your poster at least 4 weeks before you will need it from your preliminary drawings
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Paper sizes
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Make a ‘Wireframe’
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...or be more inventive.
TITLE
WEB Information
Names
Aims
Method
results
conc’s
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Do not underestimate...
...the power of post-it notes!
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Assemble your main elements
Headings and Data displays, based on your abstract
use your graphs and figures to drive the layout
remember: LESS IS BEST!
Decide where you will put small blocks of supporting text
aim for about 250 words on your poster
Poster title - THINK BIG!
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Use your zoom to create multilayer posters
Fuzzy Type II Systems For Beer Quality Control
www.ima.ac.uk
Aims
Method
results
conc’s
Nice big title
also important is your affiliation
Tuesday, 26 February 13
Using whitespace, do not fear!!
Its okay to leave some space in your poster!
it can help guide the eye on a visual journey
Leave breathing space around your text
Plain fonts even serif here
Same size and style of font family for all sections
Left-aligned and NOT justified text - why?
Tuesday, 26 February 13
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Community Centre101 Field Road
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Tuesday, 26 February 13
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101 Field Road 10am-3pm
Tuesday, 26 February 13
To justify or not to justify?
Tuesday, 26 February 13
Justified is not justified Many of us get invited to present our work via the medium of a poster presentation at a conference or research symposium. Experience has shown that a little power point knowledge can be dangerous, with poor design renders some attempt useless. Over use of text and lack of narrative plague poster presentations. In this mini workshop we will cover designing effective poster layout, using colour appropriately, images and graphics and poster narrative.
Tuesday, 26 February 13
Justified is not justified Many of us get invited to present our work via the medium of a poster presentation at a conference or research symposium. Experience has shown that a little power point knowledge can be dangerous, with poor design renders some attempt useless. Over use of text and lack of narrative plague poster presentations. In this mini workshop we will cover designing effective poster layout, using colour appropriately, images and graphics and poster narrative.
Tuesday, 26 February 13
Serif and Sans FontsFor larger bits of text its better to use a serif rather than a sans serif font
Serif have the little extra ‘twiddly bits’ on the ends of letters
Serif: Times, Caslon, Garamond, Baskerville, Rockwell (block serif)- I do like rockwell :)
Sans-serif: Gill Sans, Helvetica, Verdana - good for titles
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Include Contact Info
Everyone’s names from the abstract
Postal and email address
Website address
IMA Logo
University of Nottingham logo (top right)
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USE THE RIGHT LOGO!!
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Must use this version, no exceptions!
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Dont forget who funded you
EPSRC
BBSRC
MRC
Include grant numbers
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Colour is important
Help highlight text
Attract the eye
Make a design look polished
Beware of abuse! Dont want to trigger any latent acid flashbacks!
Tuesday, 26 February 13
Tuesday, 26 February 13
Basic Colour Use
Use two or three colours, no more!
Avoid Rainbow effects as they look really cheesy
Dark text on a light background is the most readable
Certain colours go well with other colours, some really don’t work
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Whoa!!
Tuesday, 26 February 13
Beware of equal contrasts
Red on blue looks well blurry
So does blue on red!
Yellow is just difficult for text
You got a christmas thing going on
Tuesday, 26 February 13
Try to pick complimentaries
Tuesday, 26 February 13
Paper Saturation
If you chose to use all dark colours remember that this will consume a lot more ink
costs more for more ink
need a higher quality paper to support it
more chance of poster being ‘sticky’
risk of smudging
As you develop your poster keep printing proofs out
Tuesday, 26 February 13
Graphs and Images
These visual components should be the highlight of your poster
Simplify and declutter your graphs for a clearer presentation
Self Contained with a detailed caption
0
25
50
75
100
2007 2008 2009 2010
Region 1 Region 2
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Pie Charts are OUT!
200720082009201020112012
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Avoid Boxes and Borders A strong temptation to put boxes around text
Use whitespace and ‘gestalt’ effect to trick the eye into seeing the box that isnt there
Tuesday, 26 February 13
Introduction!This template has column widths and font sizes optimized for printing a 36 x 56� poster—just replace the �tips� and �blah, blah, blah� repeat motifs with actual content, if you have it. Try to keep your total word count under 500 (really). More tips can be found at �Designing conference posters� at
http://colinpurrington.com/tips/academic/posterdesign
To see examples of how others have abused this template to fit their presentation needs, perform a Google search for �colin purrington poster template.�
Your main text is easier to read if you use a �serif� font such as Palatino or Times (i.e., people have done experiments and found this to be the case). Use a non-serif font for your title and section headings.
Materials and methods
Be brief, and opt for photographs or drawings whenever possible to illustrate organism, protocol, or experimental design. Viewers don’t want to read about the gruesome details, however fascinating you might find them.
Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah.
Acknowledgments!We thank I. Güor for laboratory assistance, Mary Juana for seeds, Herb Isside for greenhouse care, and M.I. Menter for questionable statistical advice. Funding for this project was provided by the Department of Thinkology, a Merck summer stipend, and the person who claims she’s my mom. [Note that people’s titles are omitted. Titles are TMI.]
Results!The layout for this section should be modified from this template to best show off your graphs and other result-related illustrations. You might want a single, large column to accommodate a big map. Or perhaps you could arrange 6 figures in a circle in the center of the poster. Do whatever it takes to make your results graphically clear. And, for the love of God (or whoever), make your graphs big enough to read from 6� away.
Paragraph format is fine, but sometimes a simple list of �bullet� points can communicate results more effectively:
• 9 out of 12 brainectomized rats survived (fig. 3a) • Brainectomized rats ate less (fig. 3b) • Control rats completed maze faster, on average,
than rats without brains (fig. 3c) (t = 9.84, df = 21, p = 0.032)
Conclusions!You can, of course, start your conclusions in column #3 if your results section is �data light.�
Conclusions should not be mere reminders of your results. Instead, you want to guide the reader through what you have concluded from the results. What is the broader significance? Why should anyone care? This section should refer back, explicitly, to the �burning issue� mentioned in the introduction. If you didn’t mention a burning issue in the introduction, go back and fix that -- your poster should have made a good case for why you did what you did. A good conclusion will also refer to the literature on the topic -- how does your research add to what is already published on the topic?
Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah.
Your name(s) here Your address(es) here"
Literature cited!Bender, D.J., E.M Bayne, and R.M. Brigham. 1996. Lunar
condition influences coyote (Canis latrans) howling. American Midland Naturalist 136:413-417.
Brooks, L.D. 1988. The evolution of recombination rates. Pages 87-105 in The Evolution of Sex, edited by R.E. Michod and B.R. Levin. Sinauer, Sunderland, MA.
Scott, E.C. 2005. Evolution vs. Creationism: an Introduction. University of California Press, Berkeley.
Society for the Study of Evolution. 2005. Statement on teaching evolution. < http://www.evolutionsociety.org/statements.html >. Accessed 2005 Aug 9.
Figure 2. Illustration of important piece of equipment, or perhaps a flow chart summarizing experimental design. Scanned, hand-drawn illustrations are usually preferable to computer-generated ones. Just bribe or flirt with an artist to get them to help you out."
Figure 3. Make sure legends have enough detail to explain to the viewer what the results are, but don�t go on and on. Donʼt be tempted to reduce font size in figure legends, axes labels, etc.—your viewers are probably most interested in reading your figures and legends! "
Often you will have some more text-based results between your figures. This text should explicitly guide the reader through the figures.
Blah, blah, blah (Figs. 3a,b). Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah.
Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah (Fig. 3c). Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah (data not shown).
Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah (God, personal communication).
For further information!Please contact [email protected]. More information on this and related projects can be obtained at www.yoursite.edu… (give the URL for laboratory web site). A link to an online, PDF-version of the poster is nice, too.
Remember: no period after journal name (unless you use abbreviation)."
Figure 4. Label the lines manually (as above) and then delete the silly key provided by your charting software. The above figure would also be greatly improved if I had the ability to draw mini rats with and without brains."
Figure 5. You can use connector lines and arrows to visually guide viewers through your results. Adding emphasis this way is much better than making the point with words in the text section. Especially useful for when you cannot be at poster to guide viewer."
Be sure to separate figures from other figures by generous use of white space. When figures are too cramped, viewers get confused about which figures to read first and which legend goes with which figure. Cramped content just looks bad, too."
Figures are preferred but tables are sometimes unavoidable. A table looks best when it is first composed within Microsoft Word, then �Inserted� as an �Object.� If you can add small drawings or icons to your tables, do so!
unpithed"
pithed"
The presence of this band confirms that X is true."
Maze difficulty index"
Time (s)"
Pithed rats took longer to navigate maze!
I sure wish I�d presented my theory with a poster before I
wrote my book."
Put a figure here that explores one particular outcome in a complicated (and boring) table of results."
Format in �sentence case.� This means only the �t� in �title� gets capitalized."
All columns should have exactly the same width and be separated from each other by exactly the same amount of white space. "
Hi. If you’ve found this poster helpful, please consider sending me a postcard from wherever you are presenting your poster. It makes me feel like a have friends. Colin Purrington, Dept of Biology, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA 19081, USA.
Title that hints at the underlying issue or question!
Putting titles on graphs makes your graph instantly understandable to your viewers. E.g., just TELL your viewer whatʼs so cool or important about the graph…donʼt make them hunt for it."
Figure 1. Photograph or drawing of organism, chemical structure, or whatever…that might help lure people to your poster. Yes, I risked my life getting this photograph."
Adhere to citation guidelines in your field exactly. People will find your mistakes. Trust mee."
Tuesday, 26 February 13
Introduction
Albert Einstein describes insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. This leads us to the question of why do we see researchers analysing clonal selection on the iris dataset time and time again?
use imaginarywhitespaceto creategood layout
Tuesday, 26 February 13
Images and Backgrounds
Use high resolution images for print media (200dpi)
Many images from the web will be in 72pt resolution
Can create a background canvas image
Beware of busy backgrounds detracting from your groundbreaking scientific results!
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Tuesday, 26 February 13
Tuesday, 26 February 13
Narrative
Arrange your content in a Z shape
Put additional information along the bottom
Follow your sections through to make a mental map of your poster information
The reader should be ‘led’ through the information
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The eye path
Tuesday, 26 February 13
Putting it all together
Decided on a message to use throughout
Created a nice layout, avoiding using boxes
Chosen your figures, images and have the right res
Decorated with an appropriate splash of colour
EDIT, EDIT, EDIT - get rid of all your extraneous text!
Tuesday, 26 February 13
Software
Powerpoint is commonly used - set canvas size
Adobe Illustrator/ InDesign are my weapons of choice
now available in A32 on selected machines and on all machines in C11
Photoshop is better for raster graphics -why?
Inkscape is very powerful vector graphics for linux
Tuesday, 26 February 13
Do you need a printed poster?
Sometimes we go to conferences that are far away
Dont want to have to carry an A0 poster tube
likely to forget it or have to check it as extra baggage
You can do the same by deciding which sections you want and print your abstract out on several pieces of A4 and pinning them up - the cheap LOFI approach
Tuesday, 26 February 13
How to present
You must prepare what you are going to say
Do a 1 sentence, 1 minute and 5 minute summary as a set piece, you can practice
Decide how you are going to use your poster as a visual aid
Top tip: print out some mini handouts in A5
Just as important as the design is the delivery
Tuesday, 26 February 13
...for a complex world
Intelligent solutions...
The IMA group is a new research group in the School of Computer Science. Our group undertakes research into intelligent modelling and data analysis techniques to enable deeper and clearer understanding of complex physical and physiological problems. The particular strength of the group lies in the bio-medical and security !elds where extremely large data volumes have to be analysed in (near) real-time to very high levels of accuracy.
IMA’s main research objectives are to:
Conduct inter-disciplinary research to investigate novel and adventurous real-world problemsFocus on modelling, representation and transformation techniques to enable better decisionsSupport the integration of emerging methodologies with more traditional approachesExplore the applicability of Complexity Science to real-world challenges
Typical techniques used by the IMA group include:
AI based Data Mining Arti!cial Immune Systems Computational Modelling Discrete and Agent-Based Simulation Fuzzy Methodologies Image Analysis Multi-Sensor Data Fusion
Intelligent Modelling & Analysis Research Group (IMA)School of Computer Science, The University of Nottingham
Jubilee Campus, Nottingham, NG8 1BB, UK.Tel: 0115 95 14719, Fax: 0115 95 14799
Email: [email protected], Web: http://www.ima.ac.uk ima.ac.uk
Tuesday, 26 February 13
References
http://www.ncsu.edu/project/posters/CreatePosterLayout.html
http://www.cns.cornell.edu/documents/ScientificPosters.pdf
http://www.colorschemer.com/online.html
Tuesday, 26 February 13