Bullet points on poster?

[suzieq]

I'm preparing my first conference poster. I find myself wanting to use bullet points, especially for the methods. I have only attended a couple of conferences so far, but I haven't really seen bullet points on posters in my field. 

Is it acceptable to use them? Are there certain sections where they should/shouldn't be used? 

[fuzzylogician]

With the caveat about field-specific differences, I think it's fine to use bullet points. The goal is to put just as much information as necessary for your readers to understand what you were doing, no need for complete sentences. Bullet points are a good way to convey that. A useful structure for your poster depends on what you are trying to convey with it, but there is no one correct way of doing things, as long as you get your point across. There are general advice posts you can find by doing a quick search, to give you some idea of how to go about choosing colors, font sizes, etc. Is there any chance you can find some sample posters from your field? For example, a google image search for "poster psychology" yields several results that look like they could be helpful.

Edit: and here are guidelines for my field, in case they help: http://www.linguisticsociety.org/resource/lsa-poster-guidelines

Edited August 3, 2016 by fuzzylogician

[suzieq]

Thanks, great advice! 

Side note... how much harder was grad school pre-internet?

[TakeruK]

For a first time poster maker, I recommend reading this blog for lots of great poster tips: http://betterposters.blogspot.com/

Many poster tips apply to all fields of research, but the blog covers a wide range of research fields. So, you can also choose to focus more on the ones from your field after you see the general overall tips (font size, white space usage etc.)

The most helpful type of posts from the blog, in my opinion, are the ones where users submit their poster (or poster drafts) and the blog critiques them and provides constructive feedback. It's especially striking when the user returns with an improved version and you see them side by side. Of course, there is a lot of subjectivity in poster presentations too, so don't just take what you read from one source as the only right answer. You'll find differing opinions even on the same site, and you should read through a good number of these "critiques" from betterposters and also read information from people in your field specifically.

Now, to answer the specific question about bullet points: I keep text on my poster very minimal. I rarely use complete sentences, only sentence fragments that convey the meaning I want. I let my figures do most of the communication (and don't forget, you are also standing next to the poster to provide context)**. So, on posters, I often write like I would write bullet points, but sometimes I don't have the actual bullet point "symbol". But this can be field-dependent.

**Note: Most conferences in my field have posters with the intention of an audience viewing them while the presenter is standing next to that poster. I also choose to design my poster to be minimalist and only to serve as a visual aid to my talking. I want the person to be looking at me most of the time and only look to the poster when I point out a specific thing. The text on the poster is barely enough to tell a minimal story if I don't happen to be around, but my goal is to get the viewer to come find me and ask me about that poster. This isn't always the best strategy though, just what I prefer to do when possible!

[suzieq]

Lovely, thank you!

[Humulus_lupulus]

For sure! Posters are meant to communicate information quickly to the readers. Block text is a major turn-off (for me, anyway) so I've always used bullets.