Research Project Information

Many organizations send out instructions for preparing a good poster which includes a diagram of a viewable layout. These instructions and the diagram will be placed here.

Posters are the medium by which most trial and pilot results are presented. This is usually the novice researcher's first exposure to the scientific public. Posters take considerable care to do well because of the need to balance attractiveness - so people will stop and look - with the need to get enough information across in less than a minute to demonstrate your point. People drift through poster sessions and are attracted as much by a really good looking display as a clear, relevant title. If you type out your poster on computer paper and pin up a series of sheets covered with solid text without a huge title board, the odds of anyone stopping by are very low.

A few pointers:

1. Just adding a prominent title board on a bit of cardboard helps tremendously because middle aged, visually impaired scientists can make it out from more than two feet away.

2. The viewers will get your point from the title and the summary or miss it entirely. The summary should be less than a hundred words and be typed out in very large, dark text. Nothing less than 40 point will do for the summary because nobody can read 12 point type such as this from more than two feet away and people aren't going to put their noses against your poster unless they are certain there is something on it they absolutely need to know. If they want more information than is in the summary, they will look at the rest of the poster.

3. Include a very clear diagram of the experimental design and a summary of the subject's characteristics. Several excellent graphs and tables no more complex than you would use for a slide should cover the results.

4. Keep text to a minimum. Nobody wants to spend five minutes in front of your board trying to read an article.

5. Provide handouts with the full manuscript so people don't feel that their only chance to get the information is from what little they can glean from the poster. Handouts insure that people can use your information if they want to because they have it. It also gives you a second chance to get your point across because they'll see your title again when they sort through all the stuff they picked up at the meeting prior to dumping 99% of it.

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