During professional conferences, poster presenters speak with other psychology professionals providing insights into the information offered within the poster as well as explaining key elements of the

by Lorrie Faith Cranor

Poster sessions at conferences and university research fairs provide excellent opportunities for students to show off their work and to discuss their research in an informal setting. While it is important to present good work at a poster session, even the most outstanding research projects will receive little attention if they are not presented well. This article provides a guide to creating and presenting an attractive and informative research poster.

The most important part of your poster is the content. Before you start planning your poster design, decide on the content you wish to present. Students often make the mistake of trying to present an entire thesis or journal article on a poster. Don't try this approach. People do not have the time or patience to read a lengthy report at a poster session. Your poster should be an abstract that advertises your work. If your audience likes the poster, they can request a copy of your whole thesis or paper to read when they get home. You might provide copies of your paper next to your poster or pass out flyers with information on how to get your paper electronically, but don't put the whole paper on your poster.

Given that you have limited space, you must decide what aspects of your research are most important to present. This depends a lot on your audience. If you are presenting your poster to a general audience you will need to provide a lot of background information and emphasize the applications of your research. If your audience already understands and appreciates your research area, you should focus on your unique contributions and emphasize your results (if you have any -- some poster sessions allow students to display research in progress).

Regardless of what you decide to emphasize, make sure your poster includes a clear and succinct statement of your research problem, a brief description of your approach, and summary of any results you have obtained to date. The organizers of the poster session might also supply a list of items that your poster should include.

Create an outline of the content you plan to present. Then fill in each section of the outline with short paragraphs and bulleted or numbered lists. Do not include lengthy paragraphs on your poster. Unless you will be presenting to a very technical audience, avoid complicated equations and code fragments of more than a few lines. Depending on the size of your poster and the number of graphics you include you will generally have room for somewhere between 500 and 1500 words. If your initial draft is longer than that, reduce the number of words before you start working on the poster design.

When designing your poster you should focus on creating a design that can be read quickly and places visual emphasis on the most important parts. The first step for achieving these goals is to select one or two easy-to-read fonts. Your text should be set in a large font -- 16 pt minimum, 30 to 60 pt preferred. Select a larger, bold font for headings (possibly in multiple sizes if you have more than one level of headings). Select a smaller font for details and footnotes that are not essential to understanding your research but may be of interest to some readers.

Your text should be presented in such a way that someone who does not want to spend a lot of time reading your poster can get a quick overview. Whenever possible, present text as bulleted or numbered lists. Use a bold font or an alternate color to emphasize the most important bits of text. Place details in a smaller font below the main points or in separate boxes off to the side.

Finally, don't forget to spell check and proof read your text!

As the old saying goes, a picture's worth a thousand words. Graphics can be excellent tools for explaining procedures, describing equipment, or summarizing results. Use graphs, flow-charts, photographs, and diagrams to illustrate your poster. Not only will they add visual interest, but they will allow people to gain a quick understanding of your work without reading lengthy paragraphs of text.

Depending on the software you use to create your poster, you may be able to use the same software to create graphics. Some software also allows you to import graphics from drawing or graphing programs. But if this is difficult or impossible to do with your software, don't hesitate to physically cut and paste graphics onto your poster.

Color is an excellent tool for brightening up your poster, visually grouping elements, and drawing attention to the most important elements. It can also make graphs and diagrams easier to read and understand. However, color should be used carefully and with purpose. It should not be randomly applied just for the sake of having color. Unless you are experienced with using color, select a palette of one to four colors and use them consistently throughout your poster.

If you have access to a good color printer, consider designing your entire poster in color. Select a dark color such as black or deep blue for your main text. Select a bright color such as red or magenta for important text. You might also want to use a contrasting color for headings and bullets. You can make entire elements stand out or identify them as part of a group by filling them with a light-colored background or surrounding them with a brightly colored border. You might use color to visually distinguish each section of your poster (for example, problem, background, approach, and results) or to indicate the importance of each item.

Even if you do not have a color printer, there is plenty you can do with color. The simplest way to add color to your poster is to mount each of the modular components on a sheet of colored construction paper. But be consistent with your colors: do not buy a package of assorted colors and use one of each color. You can also print your headings in an outlined font and color them in with bright colored markers. Use the markers to shade bar graphs and diagrams in matching colors.

Go to the poster session ready to talk to a lot of people. Not only is this a good opportunity for you to tell people about your work, but it is also a good opportunity for you to get new ideas that might improve your work. So if people seem interested in what you are doing, engage them in conversation. A poster forum I presented at a few months before I began interviewing for a job was good practice for answering the types of questions I got asked about my research while interviewing.

It's also a good idea to think ahead of time about some of the questions you might get asked. This is especially important if you are presenting a small component of a large group research project. You should have a working knowledge of the whole project and be able to answer questions about the project in general. If you don't think you can do that, talk with the other members of your research group to get a better understanding of the rest of the project. You should also have some knowledge of similar research projects and how your project differs from them. A frequent question people ask about research is how it differs from similar work, so be prepared with an answer.