Research Poster Design

Who will be viewing your poster?  Will it be someone who is familiar with the topic or someone who is completely new to the field? Your main goal in creating a poster is to deliver a message about your research to your audience, so identifying your audience is key.

Things to Consider:

• Jargon
  When a group of people use a specialized term that people outside of the group may not understand, it is known as "jargon."  If you are designing a poster for a professional conference where everyone is using the same vocabulary, it's perfectly fine to use jargon - but if a member of your audience may not know the term it's best to define it somewhere in the text.
• Poster Presentation vs. Poster Display
  Some poster sessions involve the researcher and allows viewers to ask questions, but some are simply halls with posters and no additional presentation.  Be aware of which situation you will be in so that your message can be delivered to your audience.
   

By now you know a lot about your topic, but you can't cram everything you know into a poster.  What are the biggest takeaways?  What is the most interesting finding?  What must be included to deliver your message to your audience?  Write down your findings and rank them using these guidelines.  Focus on the top two and use additional findings as supporting evidence.

Posters deliver information in chunks, like research articles.  They usually have:

• A title and authors
• An introduction with background information
• A description of the research process
• The results from the research that was performed
• A conclusion that summarizes the goal of the research and its findings

For more information about parts of a poster, go to the Parts of a Poster subpage.

40% of your poster should be visuals.  Remember that research posters summarize information visually - this can be done in unlimited ways.  Before you start designing, look at the visuals that you already have from your research - are there maps or pictures that can give your research context?  Consider your findings and how they can be visualized.

For more help with visuals go to the Working with Graphics subpage.

Take the time to doodle a few ideas on paper.  Consider that we read from left to right and top to bottom.  Where does the audience need to look first?  Do you want to use two, three, or four columns?  How many rows?  Will your poster be landscape or portrait orientation?  Google Image Search academic posters in your field and see what you like (and don't like).