FAQ for Students

Posters should be readable by viewers from three to five feet away. The message should be clear and understandable without oral explanation. The following guidelines are presented to help improve the effectiveness of your poster presentations.

• Initial plan or sketch plan: Begin your poster preparation early by sketching the general layout and identifying the figures, tables, and text that will be used. Focus your presentation on a few key points. Consider various styles of data presentation to achieve clarity and simplicity. Does the use of color help? What needs to be explained in text? Identify headlines and headings that will help attract attention. Plan ahead to prepare color photographs, which help attract attention.
• Rough layout: Enlarge your best initial sketch, keeping the dimensions in proper proportion to the final poster size. The backing board on the easel is 4 by 4 feet, and poster dimensions are typically 42 by 48 inches. Ideally, the rough layout should be full size. Print the title board, including names of authors and their affiliation, as well as section headings. Indicate text by horizontal lines. Draw rough graphs and tables. This will give you a good idea of proportions and balance. Ask associates for comments. This is still an experimental stage.
• Final layout: The artwork is complete. The text and tables are typed but not necessarily enlarged to full size. Now determine whether or not the message is clear. Do the important points stand out? Is there a balance between the text and the illustrations? Is there spatial balance? Is the pathway through the poster clear? The following points should be considered:
  • Simplicity: The temptation to overload the poster should be resisted. More material may mean less communication and may discourage viewers.
  • Balance: The figures and tables should cover slightly more than 50 percent of the poster area. If you have only a few illustrations, make them large. Typically, there will be sections of text covering items such as objectives, materials and methods, and conclusions, but try to keep these sections brief and succinct. The poster should be understandable without oral explanation.
  • Typography: Avoid abbreviations, acronyms, and jargon. Use a consistent typestyle. Use large, simple type. Many software packages and laser printers offer great flexibility in preparing text in different fonts and sizes.
  • Eye Movement: The movement (pathway) of the eye over the poster should be natural—down the columns or along the rows. The reader should not have to search to figure out the proper order or flow of your poster. Size attracts attention. Arrows, pointing hands, numbers, or letters can help clarify the sequence.

Following the tips below will help avoid problems when you put your presentation on the computer in the session room. The presentation should run regardless of the type of computer on which it was created.

We strongly urge you to take advantage of the opportunity to help avoid unexpected problems.

• Bring your presentation on an external drive to the assigned room before the start of the session where someone will load it on the computer there.
• Images: Save all images as jpegs before importing them into PowerPoint.
• Fonts: Use only the standard system fonts, not the funny ones you downloaded from the web.
• Attached files: Keep movies and others files in the same folder as the presentation. If you need to move the presentation around, move the whole folder. The presentation will find them automatically in that folder.
• Computer platform: When making the presentation, if you’re on a computer platform different from what you created the presentation on, open PowerPoint first, then open the presentation.
• Version: You may want to make sure your presentation is not in a very new version of PowerPoint in case the session computer has the earlier version. To avoid problems, you can “Save As…” to a lower version (i.e. PowerPoint XP to PowerPoint 2000). Bring this version with you on a thumb drive.

Good Planning

• Short talks must be concise. Take the time limit seriously and plan accordingly. It is inconsiderate to your audience and to other speakers to run over your allotted time. Furthermore, a good chair will cut you off when your time’s up, whether or not you’ve finished. If you haven’t planned well, you’ll have to race through the end of your talk and may even miss the chance to deliver the punch line.
• To be concise, talks must be carefully planned and rehearsed. It is impossible to overemphasize the importance of rehearsing. No actor would walk onto a stage without having rehearsed; no athlete would play without having practiced. The more times you go over your talk, the more confident you will feel when you stand up in front of an audience, and the more convincing and informative you will sound. Rehearse with your colleagues, your roommates or friends, your cat or dog, yourself. Rehearse until you are tired of the talk; the adrenaline that comes from standing up in front of a group will make you feel and sound animated when you actually come to deliver your talk, even if numerous repetitions have led you to feel bored by the talk before you actually begin to speak.
• The most effective talks are conversational, but not colloquial. Talks delivered in very formal language are hard to listen to. Talks that are filled with slang are not taken seriously. And if you sound interested in your work, your audience will be interested, too.
• Don’t try to say too much. Think about two or three things that you would like your audience to remember a week from now and structure your talk around those points. Usually, they are conclusions, but one of them maybe a new technique or a really exciting result. Heed the old advice–tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them.
• In planning a talk, it helps to have a general model to follow. One is described here. It is not the only possible one, but it is one that works. If you follow it, it can help you to make your talk more effective.

For those who are sponsors for Thursday sessions, please keep the following in mind.