Plants & Human Affairs (BIOL106)  -  Stephen G. Saupe, Ph.D.; Biology Department, College of St. Benedict/St. John's University, Collegeville, MN 56321; ssaupe@csbsju.edu; http://www.employees.csbsju.edu/ssaupe

Poster Presentations

    Posters are an effective and common tool to present scientific data.  Essentially, a poster provides a brief visual summary of the contents of a scientific paper including Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, Conclusion and Literature Cited.  Some tips for preparing a good poster include:

1. should be readable at a distance of five feet
2. prepare an initial sketch/layout of your poster; consider headlines, text topics, graphs, tables
3. focus attention on a few key points
4. figures and tables should cover slightly more than 50% of your poster
5. keep text to a minimum, edit ruthlessly
6. use a simple font
7. keep explanatory text close to the figure it is explaining
8. Group related information together, perhaps by surrounding each group with some blank space and labeling them with a heading
9. Blank space is okay - if material is too crammed it is hard to read
10. tables and figures should hold the main content - graphics should dominate
11. avoid the use of all cap's

Click here for a Poster Presentation Checklist

References:  Several good references for preparing posters include:

• How to Make a Great Poster - D Mandoli, University of Washington, Seattle
• Creating Effective Posters - George R. Hess, Kathyrn Tosney (NC State University) and Leon Liegel
• Davis M, KJ Davis, DC Wolf (1992) Effective communication with poster displays.  J. Nat. Resources Life Sci. Educ 21: 156 - 160.

Last updated:  09/26/2008 � Copyright  by SG Saupe