It's that time of the
summer... our Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) students are
starting to think about and draft their research posters. I love this part of
the summer! It's great to see students get excited about sharing the
culmination of ten weeks of research experiences in glorious, giant poster
format. This is usually their very first scientific poster though so our lab
has collected a plethora of resources for them to use as guidelines which are
now, conveniently, located here.
Short Summaries of Tips
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The legendary overwhelming (but awesome)
poster session at SfN. (Source
|
The Society for
Neuroscience (SfN) holds an annual meeting each year that averages about 30,000
attendees who present thousands of posters over the span of a few days. It's a
big deal and my favorite meeting to attend! These are some general guidelines that
are applicable even if your poster won't be presented at the SfN meeting.
Experimental Biology is
an annual meeting which includes six societies from related disciplines
(alphabetized so no one's feelings get hurt if I list their society
last): American Association of Anatomists (The other triple
A: AAA), American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB), American
Society for Investigative Pathology (ASIP), American Society for
Nutrition (ASN), American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental
Therapeutics (ASPET), and the American Physiological Society (APS). The
tips here are brief but to the point. The bullet about Balance is particularly
important.
The American
Physiological Society has their own tips for posters as well.
At my institution, most
of us are still stuck on using Microsoft Powerpoint to create our conference
posters even though some people abhor it and do NOT recommend
it. This presentation explains why Adobe Illustrator is a better choice and
also has some good, concrete guidelines on font size, bringing copies of your
poster to hand out, etc.
Video, tips, and a great
Quick Reference with a summary of tips. The Quick Reference guide also includes
many other poster tip resources from the primary literature.
Here's a checklist for
when you think you're done (but you're really probably not... remember, your PI
still has to read it and cover it with red ink).
More Detailed and Longer
Explanations of Creating Great Posters
This is a go-to resource
that many PIs point their students to. Great information covering everything
from the template, content, Dos and Don’ts, and motivational advice on
preparing posters.
Scicurious's
Poster Tips (very thorough with examples of good and bad, plus she's
funny)
Bethany Brookshire, aka Scicurious, wrote this awhile back and there are some great comments! She then updated it to reflect her, um, maturing tastes when it comes to poster design (dark colored backgrounds with white text aren't the best after all). It's a great post with examples of good and bad text (you don't get this with a lot of tips resources, which are generally aimed at a broad audience) plus, she's funny. We like a little funny while we're sucking down caffeine and working longer hours to create the best poster imaginable.
Bethany Brookshire, aka Scicurious, wrote this awhile back and there are some great comments! She then updated it to reflect her, um, maturing tastes when it comes to poster design (dark colored backgrounds with white text aren't the best after all). It's a great post with examples of good and bad text (you don't get this with a lot of tips resources, which are generally aimed at a broad audience) plus, she's funny. We like a little funny while we're sucking down caffeine and working longer hours to create the best poster imaginable.
Better
Posters blog
Dr. Zen Faulkes has a lot of great information on his blog! More about style than content, which is almost just as important as the experimental data because more people stop by a poster if the style is clear and easy to understand than if it’s just a wall of text. Just be careful, it’s easy to spend an entire day just reading his posts and getting ideas!
Dr. Zen Faulkes has a lot of great information on his blog! More about style than content, which is almost just as important as the experimental data because more people stop by a poster if the style is clear and easy to understand than if it’s just a wall of text. Just be careful, it’s easy to spend an entire day just reading his posts and getting ideas!
Examples of Posters
- Flickr group, Pimp My Poster
- Facebook group, Crit My Poster
- Better Posters also has a lot of examples and critiques
- Also, make sure to use Google to find posters in your discipline, example: biomedical science conference posters or neuroscience (hey, I'm biased, ok?) conference posters.
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