I had the pleasure of giving a workshop on scientific poster design at the University of Florida, Gainesville (Feb 8th 2019) where I was hosted by the Dr. Samantha Brooks and Brooks Equine Genetics Laboratory. Below are the general guidelines that I prepared for the participants of the workshop.
- Keep in mind:
- Science is communicated by different ways such as peer-reviewed scientific articles, review papers, book chapters, books, scientific talks, or scientific posters. Each mean of scientific communication targets a specific audience and aims to deliver/report different scientific content.
- The scientific content of your poster may not be as developed and complete as that of your future scientific papers. Your poster can be as simple as the layout of future experiments.
- Scientific posters are not scientific papers and do not need to follow the standard sections (Abstract, Introduction, M&M etc.). You may be tempted to follow such model of scientific layout due to its wide usage in poster design.
- The text content of your poster does not need to be in a paragraph format. As mentioned above, your poster is not a scientific paper. I highly suggest that you use bullet points of concise short sentences rather than long and complicated paragraphs.
- Too much text in your poster is not attractive and is not a sign of sophistication or a high-quality work. On the contrary, in many cases it is both repulsive to the audience and a sign of desperation to fill the poster area.
- The general audience (people out of your specialized field) will only glance at your poster and will likely spend ~15-20s (if you are lucky) looking at your poster whereas colleagues within your specialized field will be familiar with your work and will likely seek you to engage in lengthy scientific discussion. In both cases a lot of text material is a deterrent from any short or long scientific discussion.
- Large scientific conferences display hundreds if not thousands of posters. Your goal is to catch the eye and mind of as many scientists as possible, which may initiate future collaborations or simply enhance your science with ideas and constructive criticism.
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Poster design software: Many softwares can be used for the design of your poster. I recommend using Microsoft Powerpoint due to its wide usage at academic institutions by faculty and students.
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Poster layout: Both landscape and portrait layouts are used to design scientific posters. However, a portrait layout is preferred especially in large scientific conferences since the posters’ display area is limited and more portrait than landscape posters can be displayed in the same area.
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Poster size: 46 inches height x 34 inches width (~100cm height, 80 cm width).
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Poster margins: Leave ½ inch (1cm) margins from all sides of the poster. Your poster material will be placed in 45inx33in design area (98cmx78cm).
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Font type: Use a basic font that can be easily read (ex. Arial).
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Font color: You need a font color that provides the greatest color contrast with the poster background color (see below). I suggest using black font color for most of the written content of your poster. You can use other colors for certain words/sentences to emphasize importance or a specific relationship to graphical content.
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Font size: The font size will vary depending on the poster section. However, with the exception of the authors’ affiliations, figure/table legends, acknowledgments, and possibly the references, all sections should be typed with font size at least 28pt. This will make the poster readable form ~5 feet away. Remember you don’t want to get people very close to the poster because it will reduce their interaction with you and may block other interested individuals from having visual access to your poster.
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Poster background: Avoid having a colored background or a background photo. Consider leaving the background white. This will concentrate the focus of the eye on the material of the poster (both writing and figures) rather than the background. This will also provide you with a lot of freedom in the design process.
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Title: Use a short catchy title in a large font size (>60pts). Your scientific poster is not a scientific paper to be titled with details and does not need to be easily searched and cited. The title should be attractive to individual passing by the poster or glancing at the conference’s program.
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Authors: Write the names of the authors in the order agreed upon by the research team (font size 36pt). Underline the name of the presenter. The presenter may not be the first author. This may happen when your advisor takes your work to large scientific conferences. After each of the authors’ names place a number in a superscript. The superscripted numbers will be the reference for the affiliations of the authors (font size ~24pt). You can be creative with the display of the affiliations. You do not need to give every institution/department a separate line under the author line. You can simply separate the numbered affiliations with a comma.
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Logos: Choose good quality logos of your institution or lab. It is preferred to choose a logo with a transparent back ground. There is no standard location to place the logos and it all depends on the design. I suggest that you scale the size of the logo proportionally to the height of the title lines.
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Abstract: Most scientific conferences require the submission of a ~ 250 words abstract for your poster, which will be printed in the conferences program or uploaded to the conference’s webpage. Thus, there is no need to include the abstract in your poster. You can use part of your submitted abstract in the poster but not in its entirety and not in a paragraph format.
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Objectives: The objectives section is the first most important section of your poster. You need to pay extra attention to the formulation of your sentences and the writing of concise and clear objectives. The entire poster will be focused on the various ways to achieve the objectives. I suggest that you highlight this section with an attractive color and make the font bold (font size 32-36 pts).
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Hypotheses: Your hypotheses may be included in the objectives section and highlighted. The inclusion of a hypothesis (if you have one) makes your poster easier to explain from your side and easier to read and understand by the audience.
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Figures: Your figures are the second most important part of your poster. Unlike your scientific papers which represent your work in written words or your oral presentations which are largely aided by your spoken words, your posters are largely visual representations of your science. Your audience will mostly look at your poster rather than read it and in many cases you will not be around to explain the content verbally. Thus, it is essential to present your work in clear figures and diagrams that are both attractive to the eye and self-explaining to the mind. Your figures may have different forms (plots, diagrams, pictures etc.). I recommend that you generate the plots and diagrams with a transparent or white background. This will ensure the perfect blend of your figures with the overall background of your poster (see poster background above).
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Tables: I suggest that you avoid inserting tables in your poster. Tables are generally detailed summary of your work or your scientific findings. The location of such details is not your poster but your scientific papers. Also tables generally occupy a large area of the poster (if displayed with a reasonable font size) which can alternatively be used for more important graphical or written content.
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Photos: If you study an organism and you do not have a good quality photo, you can obtain one from sources that authorize the photo usage for non-commercial use such as Flickr creative commons images (https://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/) or Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page)). Make sure to mention the name/account of the owner of the photo in you acknowledgments or in the figures’ legend.
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Conclusion: The conclusion(s) section is the third most important section of the poster. It should give a general summary of the findings in a concise sentence or few sentences. The conclusions should include the general take home message of your scientific work.
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30 seconds summary: I highly recommend that you include a section that provides a 30 seconds summary of the entire content of your poster in few words or a sentence. This may need some experimenting and activating or over-expressing most of your creativity genes.
See the implementation of these guidelines in our posters
If you found this workshop helpful and enhanced your scientific poster design experience, please share a pdf file of your future poster design with me (hhalhaddad@gmail.com).
