This document summarizes a seminar on scientific poster design. It provides guidelines on layout, formatting, and content for creating an effective research poster. Key recommendations include using images and figures to guide the layout instead of heavy text blocks; employing large, easy-to-read fonts; separating information into clear sections; and following basic design principles for color, white space, and alignment. Students will work in groups to design a poster on their research project and present it at an upcoming conference.

1. Scientific Poster
Design
Seminar Three / Professor Allen
October 31, 2014
Gwendolyn Shaw, gwendolyn.shaw@macaulay.cuny.edu
ITF, Macaulay Honors College at Baruch College
(with slides borrowed from Kirsten Greene, Craig Willse and
Emily Sherwood)

2. Workshop Goals
• Understand project expectations
• Learn the basics of poster design
• Meet with and talk to your group to begin
planning your posters

3. Possible Dimensions—Just FYI
• 36"x48"
• 30"x42"
• 26"x38"
• 27"x39"
• 17"x22"
• 24"x36"
• 18"x24"
• 34"x44"
• 28"x40"
• 22"x34"
• Other (NB—PPT produces up to 56”x56”

4. What is a poster, anyway??
• Visual means for communicating research to
an academic or professional community.
• Summary of research that serves to create
interest by highlighting the most important
things.

5. Sample Poster

6. Requirements
• Each group must produce one poster
• Sign up for the conference (and present your
great work!)
• More info:
http://macaulay.cuny.edu/eportfolios/allen14
/files/2014/08/Research-Project-
Instructions.pdf

7. Elements of a Successful Poster
• Images should guide the overall layout, not the
text.
• Images should be simple and easily read from afar
• Use Sans-Serif fonts for easy reading
• Avoid cluttering the poster (too many graphs or
photos).
• Watch your color contrasts! Color should be easy
on the eyes.
• Make sure all components are aligned properly.
• Make use of an underlying structure that guides the
viewer.

8. Font Guidelines
• For the major sections of the poster:
Title: 85pt
Authors: 56pt
Sub-headings: 36pt
Body text: 24pt
Captions: 18pt
• By Distance:
To be legible 6 feet use 30 pt.
To be legible 10 feet use 48 pt.
To be legible 12 feet use 60 pt.
To be legible 14 feet use 72 pt.
More information: http://www.makesigns.com/tutorials/poster-design-layout.aspx

9. Remarks on Color
• Watch your color contrasts! Color should be
easy on the eyes.
• Color should:
• Highlight or emphasize
• Separate and define sections of your poster
• Associate related information (color-code)
• AVOID
• Colors that are too bright or bold—they compete with
the information!
• Colors that overwhelm the viewer (e.g. red is a color
that jumps forward at the viewer)

10. Red focuses attention, but
attacks you in large doses!
Barnett Newman, Vir Heroicus Sublimus, 1950, MoMA

11. Ways to choose a color scheme
• Using Photos? Let them dictate the color
scheme of your poster
• Useful tools
• Color scheme generator (uses a photograph as the
basis)
• http://www.pictaculous.com/
• http://www.cssdrive.com/imagepalette/
• Remember: Keep the Back in Background

12. Sizing
• Figures
• No figures should be smaller than 5x7”
• All figures should have captions (and ideally
numbers)
• Photographs
• 300 dpi (high resolution)
• Crop to highlight what is important the focal point
• Thin black outlines help legibility
• Use iNaturalist or other open-source, creative
commons licensed resources

13. Infographics
• Free Infographic generator!
• http://www.easel.ly/

14. General Organization
• Title Block
• Abstract / Introduction
• Methods
• Results
• Conclusions
• Sources

15. Title Block
• Most prominent feature (make it big to be
legible from afar)
• Located at the top of your poster
• Centered or left justified

16. Basic Layout
• Landscape-oriented (hot-dog style)
• Separate into at least 2 columns (do not have to be
equal width)
• Read left-to-right
• Portrait-oriented (hamburger-style)
• Read top-to-bottom
• Divided into horizontal registers or bands for easy
legibility
• No matter what—align your edges, use
borders, and leave plenty of white space

17. Abstract / Introduction
• Introduction should briefly present the topic
and your thesis.
• Thesis should be brief, direct, and succinct.
• You might address the following:
• Why does the problem matter?
• Has anyone else looked at this problem?
• What are some of the related findings?
• Be sure to cite references.

18. Abstract / Introduction

19. Methods
• How are you answering your question, testing
your hypothesis, or fulfilling your statement of
purpose?
• What data did you use for your study?
• What are the methods you are using to analyze
your data?
• What are the drawbacks?

20. Methods

21. Results
• What did you find?
• This should be purely descriptive.
• Pictures, images, and charts are particularly
important for this part.
• You still want to describe your pictures.
• Aside from thesis, this is the most important
part.

22. Results

23. Conclusions
• Wrap it up
• What did you discover?
• Do you accept or reject your hypothesis?
• How do you answer your question?

24. Conclusions

25. Sources
• You must cite the sources of any images, data,
or sources you reference.
• Posters are like papers and plagiarism applies.
• Follow standard citation procedures.

26. Sources

27. The Good, the Bad, and the
Ugly

31. Compare: Left and Right

32. Do’s and Don’t’s

33. Things To Keep in Mind
• You have no more than 10 minutes of someone’s
attention for a formal presentation. Even LESS
when presenting informally
• The more pictures the better
• The less text the better
• Leave lots of white/blank space
• Have a border
• Does your poster make good organizational sense?
(Is the layout easy to follow?)
• Look at examples on the web (I will post links to
our website)

34. Resources
• Guidelines and step-by-step instructions
• http://www.makesigns.com/tutorials/
• Infographics on Easel.ly
• www.Easel.ly
• Image editing
• www.Pixlr.com or you have Gimp on your Macs
• Tips on Design and Layout
• http://colinpurrington.com/tips/academic/posterd
esign

35. Get to Work!
Meet with your group to discuss the elements
of style and organization you might use for
your poster. Use some time in class for
planning, and ask questions if you have them!
Gwendolyn.shaw@macaulay.cuny.edu