Creating a Convention Poster For The First Time

[PsyDGirl]

Hello All,

 

I'm creating a convention poster for the first time and it's driving me crazy!! Anyone out there have any tips outside the APA guidelines? I'm trying to add a bit of color to it but I'm worried that the reviewers might hate that. I'd relish any tips anyone has for making them eye catching without being distracting!

[TakeruK]

I like this blog/website: http://betterposters.blogspot.com/ because they provide design tips for scientific posters as well as they post critiques of posters that have been volunteered by readers. A lot of design related stuff is very subjective so it's helpful to read a whole bunch of these posts to get a wide variety of different opinions. Then, you can choose the strategies that you like best and what you think works best for your work and your field.

 

I know this is also in the Psychology forum and I'm not in Psychology but there really is a lot of common themes when it comes to poster design, so I think that blog/website should have something useful to all fields! But of course, senior students in Psychology (here or in your department) can let you know if there are any field-specific "rules" you should follow

 

Finally, just to answer your question: I like lots of colour in my posters because you want it to look interesting from across the room and entice someone to make the trek over to see it up close. But I try not to "overdo" it by keeping almost all text in black or white (or some high contrast colour) and only use colour to highlight key phrases, as part of the design, or as part of the figures. And maybe this is a field specific things but since you mention "APA guidelines", I want to say that in my field, we try to make our posters look very different from a paper. I don't think the guidelines for journals in my field look very good when it's in poster format!!

[lewin]

How many words do you have? Cut that by half.

[TakeruK]

How many words do you have? Cut that by half.

 

My preference for my poster is that I don't want anyone to read it at all, except for something like the "research question" and "conclusion". Other than these sections, almost all my text is just labels or headings. This creates a clean look but the definite downside is that the poster makes very little sense if someone was just looking at it without me to explain it. So I have (and want to) spend a lot of time near my poster. In my field, I find that this works very well--I get positive comments about the design and my explanation of my work!

[lewin]

^^That's a better explanation for what I was saying

 

 

Though there are individual differences in advisors. The one I work with now has the opposite approach: That there should be enough text on the poster to explain everything completely on its own. I disagree with this style, but there it is.

[juilletmercredi]

Ask your advisor if he has a template - not for the words, but for the design.  That is a lot better then spending a lot of time creating tables and fiddling with margins.

 

My posters usually have enough text to explain the generalities of the research on its own.  This is in case I get terribly sick and a friend has to hang my poster - or in case someone just wants to read and doesn't want to talk to me.  I prefer to read posters at conferences and only talk to the presenter if it looks interesting.

[PsyDGirl]

Thanks everyone for your suggestions - who knew a poster could cause so much stress??!!

[Arcadian]

My advisor always says "too much text."

 

So, that's been my experience with that.