Poster pains
| 10 March, 2011 | Cathryn Denney |
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Much as I often begin blog posts by staring wistfully at a blank word document for 10 minutes, I’m sure many of you are no stranger to musing over a clean white PowerPoint presentation (if that’s that your software of choice), hoping that a concise and graphically beautiful poster may magically appear. Alas, failing a visit from the poster fairy, the task of planning, designing and constructing a poster can be one of layout pitfalls, questionable colour schemes and type font crimes. This is where you can help…
We, at F1000 Posters, have an exciting line up of events this year which will begin with our very own poster of top tips for making a poster. This will appear in The Scientist magazine, culminating with poster makeovers as well as a competition for the best poster submitted over the autumn conference season.
What we’d like you to do is take a look at some of our existing posters for inspiration, and then comment below with your top tips and suggestions for writing, planning, designing and constructing a poster or, indeed, things to be avoided!
Go on; get it off your chest.
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previous post
Posters: white and black, very little color, 8.5 x 11 sheets glued (spray glue, tough stuff-Elwood Blues) onto 9 x 12 poster board. Travels well, no bulky tube. Just travel with a whole lot of push pins (4 x poster).
I print out on high gloss paper and actually use PowerPoint slides. Nice and easy.
Keep the Intro short. Keep the points as one would do in a seminar on a slide and you’ll convey the message.
Pet peeves: Long introductions that take forever to read. This isn’t a manuscript. Too many complicated figures, bad statistics, and even worse lenghty discussions. This isn’t a manuscript, but an elevator talk. Tell me the highlights.
1. Don’t use too many words. It’s not a paper; it’s a poster.
2. Avoid fancy background, annoying decorative borders, watermarks, and the like. They distract from the poster. Most people only spend a few minutes (or even less than one minute) looking at a poster before they decide whether it’s worth talking to you about it. Therefore, grab them RIGHT AWAY by avoiding extraneous detail.
3. Major oiints should be bulleted, not buried in text.
4. Figures and diagrams should be large and simple. Avoid detailed tables.
5. Don’t use some silly “clever” title. It’s not a middle school science fair.
If you compose a poster with Power Point you are in trouble. But that’s your choice. Now here are Nando’s tips.
Poster size
I know that I should not say it, but these are poster instructions for dummies!
Read carefully the poster size in the instructions provided by the congress web page. The poor guys who are taking care of the organization have to pay for those panels, and they are of a given size (the panels). Be sure that your poster respects the rules.
How to attach it
Most congresses do have all the stuff to post posters. But you do not trust them, right? Bring your stuff with you. Be self sufficient.
Title
Choose a short and informative title. Short, remember. Your poster is an advertisement of your research, it should tell people that you have done a fine research, and they should be curious, willing to talk to you, to ask you questions. You go to congresses to interact with people, right? So you have to attract their attention. If this is in the tradition of the congress, put a picture of you, near your name, so they can recognize you and come to talk to you, even if you are not standing near your poster. Do not overstate your results in the title, though. Your title must be honest. Like the rest of the poster. They say that you cannot judge a book by the cover, but the title is important. Short, remember.
The teaser
Below the title (and your name and affiliation) you have to put a teaser, something that tells in a VERY SHORT way what you have found. it is not really an abstract, but it is something like that, anyway. For you, what you have done is the most important enterprise ever achieved by humans, but at your congress there will be other 200 people with the same impression… And you will not notice them. So, plan your teaser very carefully. It is like the proverbial elevator talk. You are with Obama in an elevator and you have to convince him that your research is important. Do not speak about your methods!!!! Go straight to the problem and to the way you solved it, or you propose to solve it. If you do not like Obama, think to speak to your grandmother, or to a four-year old kid. Or to a beautiful model of your favorite sex that knows nothing about your research. In this case it is better not to be in an elevator, let’s say you are in the lobby of your hotel.
Graphic tips
After the tile, the teaser and your picture are done, you just have to put up your poster.
Remember: we look at things as if we were reading them, we start from top left and we proceed from left to right (unless you are used to write in arabic), in a series of horizontal scans, until we reach to bottom right. In the old times, the painters used a trick to enhance something that was not on top left, they drew a ray of light that, from top left, went on the important thing they wanted to show (usually a new born Jesus, or a saint). So, remember, the things you put on top left will be the first things that people will look at. It might be the organism you worked on (but if you study fecal pollution, try another strategy).
The background
it can be a single large picture, but remember that the background must allow to “read” the stuff you put on your poster. Start with a white background, put your stuff on, and then try alternatives to white, but they must fit the main content of the poster.
Fonts, font size, color, number of words
Remember: many people do not like to read tiny words. Use ARIAL as a font, and write it LARGE, it must be readable without glasses by a person who uses glasses to read tiny characters, but that can read large characters without them. Use telegraphic style, short sentences, few verbs. Did you notice that some posters have letters of such colors that they cannot be read at ease? Do not do it. Use the colors so that the letters are sharp against the background. It should be needless to say, but look around and you will see that many posters cannot be read…
The problem
The goal of science is to reduce ignorance. So you took a piece of ignorance and tried to reduce it. Like a sculptor who removes the marble that hides the statue. Describe the piece of ignorance you wanted to reduce. Do not say that it is important or interesting, the readers should say that. Just state the problem. Instead of writing INTRODUCTION write PROBLEM. It has to be direct, sharp.
Material and methods
Avoid explaining the methods, nobody cares about your methods, unless you INVENTED your methods, just refer to them as if everybody should know them, and do not go into much detail. If they are interested in your methods, it is not worth while discussing with them. They should be fascinated by the problem, by WHAT you did, and not by HOW you did it. It is like eating a beautiful dish of delicious food, and they explain you in all details how it was prepared. I do not care! I do not want to know! Let me taste my dish.
The results
Here you have to use as much graphic art as possible. Avoid thick tables with tiny numbers. Who is going to read them? If you can translate them into graphs, go for the graphs. If you can show nice pictures, go for them. But do not use pictures just to put some fine stuff in the poster. They must be relevant. Humorous pictures, comic characters (like Snoopy) are like garlic for the vampires. Very bad idea. They were fine in the Eighties, now they just show that you are a nerd, and that you have nothing interesting to say and you want to distract the public. Also in this case, remember, brevity! Short sentences, explaining the main pieces of evidence that you found: the things that were hidden by the ignorance that you removed!
Discussion
The traditional partitioning of scientific papers is not compulsory in posters, but many people expect that. If the results are self-evident, you can avoid the discussion. But if you really cannot survive without a discussion, then go for it. Guess what? it has to be short. But do not restate the results. Please! You might show the new pieces of ignorance that were revealed by the ignorance you removed, showing that you are working in a fruitful field, a field that is conducive to exciting results.
Literature cited.
do not cite it. A poster is not a paper. BUT, if you are a smart ass, and you are going to a congress where a big shot is present (and you are working in his or her field), THEN cite one of his or her papers. It can work, if the person comes to see your poster. Look at the expression of satisfaction when s/he will see that you cited THAT paper. Really great guys should not care, but we are a social species, and we all desire the approval of our conspecifics.
Leaflets
if possible, print some copies of your poster on A4 paper (if you cannot read it on that piece of paper, your poster is worth nothing, you wrote too much, fonts are too small, etc. etc.). Then you can leave them on the floor, in front of your poster. Or you can bring a plastic envelope that is left hanging below your poster, with a TAKE ONE notice. Be sure that your email address is clear, on that A4 paper.
Simplicity wins
What are the most advanced creatures of the planet? One might say vertebrates… maybe (wo)man? The most perfect creatures are those that passed through hundreds of millions of natural selection and remained almost unmodified. I am not speaking about Republicans. For animals, they are the jellyfish, but the bacteria are surely the beings that are around since the longest time, and probably they did not change much. Why? Because they are perfect. We vertebrates had to change all the time. Who is more perfect? The secret of perfection is one: simplicity. It is the most complex result one can achieve. Start with a baroque piece, and try to end up with Mondrian. Simplicity is the word that must buzz in your ears for the whole period you are working at your poster.
Presenting your poster
I once had to squeeze 80 poster presentations in a three-hour session I had to chair. I calculated that three minutes per poster were the maximum I could give. Yes, if a presentation is a poster, why should there be an oral presentation of it? Good question, but at that congress there were oral poster presentations. At the beginning of the session I said: you have 3 minutes to tell what your poster is all about. If CNN comes to this meeting and they ask you to speak about your work, what is the time you think they will give you? Ten seconds, maybe less. Take it or leave it. Ten seconds. (by the way, CNN really interviewed me at that congress, and I had five seconds). And that is the chance of your life to tell the world what you are doing. (my message was: we are shifting from a fish to a jellyfish ocean). Ten seconds can be very long, try to sit on a burning stove for ten seconds. So, I give you three minutes. Imagine, by John Lennon, is three minutes long, more or less. The trailer of a movie is less than three minutes. You think your poster deserves more space than Imagine?
I convinced them. They ALL delivered their message in three minutes, and the room was full for the whole session, and at the end of the session they all came on stage and wanted their friends to take a picture of the group that did that deed. I was SO proud of my speakers. The sessions with 15 minutes talks were SO boring. Then, at the REAL poster session, they were there, asking questions to each other, in front of their posters. Lots of fun. Of course the cheese and wine offered at the poster session helped to create the right atmosphere.
The poster as a whole
The whole is something else than the sum of the parts. The first thing you have to do, once your poster is done, is to look at it from a distance, so that you cannot read it, you have just to see it. Does it attract your attention? Can you “see” something while looking at it? If you see nothing, just some patches, then you did not assemble it properly. A poster is to be a piece of abstract art (seen from a distance) that becomes realistic once you get nearer. It must be read from different distances. They have to see it from a distance and spot it, among the rest of the fuzzy posters in the hall. What’s that? they have to say. Then they go near and they have to realize that your poster is not only beautiful, it is also deep, interesting, informative, enlightening. They should be willing to buy a copy of it, and frame it. I am speaking about art, coupled with science. If you cannot achieve art, you must try with graphics anyway.
And now my favorite motto: without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible. I told you some norms. You better learn them. But then, once you know the basic techniques, you have to invent your own. Because if we all follow these rules, the posters will all look the same. And yours, to be the best one, has to be different from them all. Something so original that it has no matches, like Escher, or Arcimboldo. Without being awkward, though. Remember your grandmother, or Obama in the elevator. Of course he will remember you if you take off your trousers, but is this the way you want to be remembered?
Anyway
Anyway, do not panic. Most of the posters you have seen were rapidly forgotten, right? So, if you fail, nobody will realize it. Relax. You will survive your poster, and you will learn from your mistakes.
If you win the poster prize
it can happen… be ready to give a short, very short talk. It has not to be just “thank you” but it has not to be the story of your life, or the list of all the people who helped you. Try to prepare such talk. You will forget it, and you will say something different, but the important thing is to be aware that this will not catch you by surprise.
If you do not win the poster prize
Chances are very high that you will not win it. You will win at the next congress!
Awesome comments. Many thanks.
Great tip about having A4-sized reprints of your poster to give away. And I’d say that if you can’t easily read all the text on an A4 reduction from a full-size poster, the full-size text is too small!
Great guidelines by Mr.Nando.The tips were really useful and interesting to read.I had begun reading the comments out of curiosity but the tips and the way it is presented here itself is something to seek inspiration from.
Could not help but chuckle at the VERY LONG tips on being succint. You’ve got to love the irony.
*grin*
dear Por Que, the road to simplicity (and to being succint) is very complex. A simple “be brief” is not enough. Unless you know already how to be that way. But then you do not need any tip. And so I said to myself: Por Que No? and I wrote a VERY LONG guide to brevity… clearly an oxymoron, glad that you noticed it… it was intended to be that way, of course.