Parts of a Poster

Parts of a Poster:

1. Banner: Title, authors, institution, & poster #.

Think BIG! Really Big! Differentiate each item by making some items bold or italic.
The title should be catching and something a general audience will understand.
Make the title as big as possible and not too long. The title should be readable from a distance of 5-7 meters. Use smaller fonts for the rest.
Include the first names of the authors.
Keep the information regarding the institute and departments to a minimum.
Adding an abstract is not necessary.

2. Introduction:

State what is known, what is not known, the question you are asking, and why it is relevant.
Use point form. Not more than 4 or 5 points. This is not an easy task.

3. Methods:

Outline the bare minimum that the audience needs to know to understand what you did.
Use a figure to illustrate the most important/unique/difficult aspect of your technique.

4. Data:

Self-explanatory graphics should dominate the poster.

Each figure should have 3 sections containing

1. A Title: A short question or declarative statement. The question asks what the figure shows. The declarative statement states it. Do not use long figure legends that are common in papers!
2. The Figure itself: Highlight the most important parts by using thicker lines or color. Keep things like axes, tick marks etc. unobtrusive. The key elements of the figure should be clearly labeled.
3. Key Points: 3 or 4 statements explaining what the data in the figure means. Use point form. This is like a figure legend in a paper, but should have much less detail.

For example the title could ask "Is poverty related to the level of literacy?".
The figure plots one measure against the other.
The points could state that: "1. Poverty is/is not inversely correlated to literacy. 2. Some statistics showing how good/poor the correlation is. 3. The implications of this.".

5. Conclusions:

Use three or four short key word phrases to summarize your conclusions and their implications.
A summary figure is often very useful.

Created 28 Sept 1995
Last updated 10 January 2007
Comments welcome: tutis.vilis@schulich.uwo.ca