How to make a good research poster
The following are just guidelines. If your institution has a template, please use what they have available to you.
SC INBRE encourages a poster size of 48" wide by 36" tall.
When designing your poster, keep in mind that this a visual of your abstract, a SUMMARY of your research, not the entire paper. Poster should stand on its own as a clear, logic presentation of your work, without any explanation from you.
DO NOT DOWNLOAD LOGO FROM THE WEB! Any version you find online is very low registration and will not produce very well. For link to hi res logo, click here.
A good poster is readable from 4' to 6' away.
Text sizes - a good guideline is:
Title: 80-85 pt
Authors: 54-56 pt
Sub-headings: 36 pt
Body text: 24 pt
Captions: 18 pt
Keep a clear flow in mind. Good posters read up and down, left to right.
Limit the amount of words on your poster - 300 is a good target. Less is best.
Watch your use of colors. Limit it to 2 or 3. Keep it visually interesting and easy on the eyes. Avoid yellow on white and blue on red (and vise versa). Avoid busy backgrounds (the above image is an example of a bad poster).
7% of the male-population is red-green color-blind – use of these colors to represent contrasting concepts should be avoided.
Don't forget acknowledgements.
Include your contact info – i.e. mail address, phone, email.
For the poster session, prepare an “elevator pitch” - one to two minute summary of your project that you could deliver to anyone during a typical elevator ride. You know what you know, but your audience does not. Keep it clear and concise. Click here for more tips on how to prepare an elevator pitch.
Images should be at least 150 dpi, but not more than 300 dpi. Save photos as .jpg or .png; line art as .png (graphs). Unless you know that they are hi res images, for the most part, images on the web do not make good images for posters.
A good test is to print a letter size version of your poster. Can you read the type? Are these the colors you really want? Does it look too busy? Do my main points pop? (It's also a good idea to have extra letter size versions of your poster with you at the poster session for anyone interested to take with them for later reference – especially if you are job hunting.)
Examples of good poster design
Examples of Bad poster design
