Creating a Science Poster

1
Creating a Science Poster

• Using PowerPoint

2
What is a Scientific Poster?

• A visually coherent means of presenting research
• Images, rather than text, should dominate a
  poster
• The poster must follow the standardized format
  for presenting scientific research including
• title, abstract, objective, introduction,
  results, discussion, conclusion, references and
  acknowledgements.

3
Example
4
Working in Groups

• Meet early on in the process and sketch out
  common goals
• Make each group member accountable for a specific
  task
• Establish a space where you can share ideas,
  research, work-in-progress, findings, etc.

5
Before You Get Started

• Sketch your plans first
• Lay-out
• Focus
• Don't forget
• Design Principles
• Make every mark count

6
Creating Your Poster

• To build your poster, open PowerPoint and when
  prompted to create a new slide presentation, at
  the new slide screen, choose a blank slide.
• This blank slide will serve as your canvas,
  i.e. as your main poster board. You will have
  only this one slide so everything that you
  usually do on all slides in a PowerPoint
  presentation, you will do on this one slide.

7
Re-sizing Your Poster

• Next, you must format the blank slide to meet the
  dimensions required for a poster. To do this, go
  to FilegtPage Setupgt choose Custom under the
  slides sized for heading and set the size
  guides to 42 wide by 36high.

8
Sections of the Poster

• All posters must follow standard scientific
  presentation
• You do not necessarily have to write out your
  methods if you instead use an illustration.
• Also, a poster is not necessarily a book so you
  do not have to arrange the sections in a manner
  which corresponds to an expected book order.

9
This is the Title of Your Presentation Jane Q.
Citizen, Hunter College, CUNY Honors College
Introduction and Objectives Lay in your
introduction x x x x x x x x x x xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Methodology x xxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxx
Study conclusions and ideas for new
research x
x
Population Studied x x x x x x x x x x x x xx x
x xxxxxxxx
Discussions xxxxx
Funding Source
10
Poster Text

• Inserting a textbox
• Font Size 18 (1/2 inch)
• Font style Arial or Times
• Bold headings and sub-headings whenever possible
  
• Acknowledgements or references lt 18 font

11
Be succinct

• Do not use too much text!!!
• Make every word count
• Shoot for short, concise sentences that are well
  illustrated.
• As well, any legends for maps or graphics need to
  be short and readable.

12
Image Format

• Save all photos as high resolution images (at
  least 300dots per inch (dpi), as tif or Jpg
  images.
• You will have to play around with quality and
  file size so that they will print clearly on the
  final poster (you are essentially blowing these
  photos up so the quality will degrade
  substantially).

13
Poster handout

• It is very effective to also create a one-sheet
  paper handout that includes key points, sources,
  annotations and contact information.
• When you hand this to interested viewers of your
  poster, they can take away the core story of your
  work.
• If you do create such a handout it should be
  created as professionally and effectively as your
  poster, and is best produced on high-quality
  paper.

14
Printing Your Poster

• Where ?
• When Allow for at least a week when printing
  your poster
• Be sure you carefully proofread the sample
• Avoid strange fonts and symbols