How to make a research poster

To make a research poster, work in six steps. Decide the one finding a passer by should remember, check the conference’s size and orientation, plan the sections with a word budget of roughly 300 to 800 words for the whole board, build two or three figures that carry the result, cut the text until figures and white space dominate, and export a PDF at the final size before preparing a two minute spoken version for the session. The table under this article sets out a budget for each section, with how a finished example handles it.

What a research poster is, and which blocks boards usually carry, is covered in what is a research poster. This article is the process for making one.

1. Start with the one finding

Before opening any layout, write the single result you want someone to walk away with. NYU Libraries’ poster guide suggests starting with three questions: what is the most important or interesting finding, how can it be shown visually, and what can you add when talking at the poster that the board does not need to say.

Then make that finding the title. UC Davis’s Undergraduate Research Center advises a short title that is a positive statement of the main result, and points readers to the Better Posters blog, a long running blog about poster design, for more.

The undergraduate research poster is an A0 portrait board for a fictional four week audit of a 50 cent reusable cup discount at two campus cafes. Its title states the finding in plain numbers, reusable cup use from 12 to 29 percent at two campus cafes, and its abstract and conclusion both say the board claims an association, not a cause, because a before and after design cannot prove the discount caused the change.

2. Check the conference specification

Display boards are fixed, so the size and orientation are not your choice. BAPEN’s guidelines for its conference, for example, set a maximum of A0 at 84 by 119 cm and require portrait. Penn State University Libraries notes that posters are typically laid out landscape at 48 by 36 inches, but may be portrait at 36 by 48.

Check four things before designing: the maximum size, the orientation, whether the organisers supply pins or adhesive, and whether an abstract is required on the board. Changing orientation after the layout is built usually means starting again, because a portrait layout stacks sections in a different order from a landscape one.

3. Plan the sections and a word budget

Plan the board section by section, with a word count for each. Butler University’s guide budgets 100 to 200 words each for the introduction, methods and results. Penn State suggests 300 to 500 words for the whole board, and NYU gives a range of 300 to 800. The table under this article combines those into a budget you can fill in.

Write methods as labelled entries rather than a paragraph. The undergraduate poster uses five: the two cafes and their morning observation window, how sales were counted in each period, the intervention of a poster and 50 cents off from week three, the chi square analysis, and the ethics line. A marker scanning for the analysis finds it without reading the rest.

Put the limits in the text, not a footnote. The example’s discussion lists everything that moved at the same time as the discount, including the poster, the weather and the end of exams, and its conclusion ends by recommending a controlled trial. That restraint is what markers and reviewers reward.

4. Let the figures carry the result

A poster’s figures are its argument. Plan two or three, and give each one question to answer.

The undergraduate poster has two. Figure 1 answers when the change happened: four weekly bars at 11.9 and 12.9 percent in the baseline weeks, then 26.8 and 31.4 percent once the discount began. Figure 2 answers whether it happened everywhere: the Library Cafe moved from 13.1 to 31.6 percent and the Science Cafe from 11.7 to 26.5. Two sites moving the same way in the same week is the strongest pattern a small audit can show.

Print the counts beside the percentages. The example gives 298 of 2,410 and 713 of 2,450 next to 12.4 and 29.1 percent, so anyone can redo the division. The clinical trial poster does the same at a larger scale, with a participant flow whose counts reconcile from 26 clinics assessed to 1,842 pairs analysed, and the survey research poster puts its response rate and denominator in the headline numbers rather than a footnote.

5. Write, then cut

Draft every section, then cut. UC Davis’s guide suggests a balance of roughly 20 percent text, 40 percent figures and 40 percent space, and says a reader should be able to take in the poster in three to five minutes. BAPEN is blunter: readers spend one to two minutes at a poster and often read the conclusions first, so give the conclusions prominence and place them at eye level.

The quickest cuts are background a specialist audience already knows, a second description of a method already shown as a diagram, and results text that repeats what a figure shows. The public health poster shows how far cutting can go: it opens with four headline numbers in a strip, so a passer by who reads nothing else still leaves with the finding.

For type sizes once the text is final, see research poster font size. For how the 40 layouts here arrange their blocks, see what 40 poster templates have in common.

6. Print it and prepare the talk

Most poster printers want a PDF at the final size. Ask the print shop, or the university print service, what they need, how long they take and what stock they use. Paperlust’s paper guide puts 170 gsm gloss as the practical minimum for an A1 or A0 indoor display poster that will not sag or curl. Book the print a week before you travel.

Then prepare the spoken version. BAPEN recommends a short oral version for its poster rounds. Two minutes is enough: the question, the method in a sentence, the result and what it means. Then stop and let the visitor ask.

Common mistakes

• A topic as the title instead of the finding.
• Methods as a paragraph nobody standing will read.
• Percentages with no counts and effects with no interval.
• A board over a thousand words, which reads as a paper pinned to a wall.
• Designing in the wrong orientation before checking the specification.
• Charts that repeat each other instead of answering different questions.

Build it

The poster tab has 40 A0 layouts, 20 portrait at 1656 by 2340 pixels and 20 landscape at 2340 by 1656. Every one carries a logo, a title, an author block, sections and a figure; most add a methods protocol, references and a QR code. Chart figures offer ten chart kinds. Export captures the board at twice the canvas, so an A0 portrait poster leaves at 3312 by 4680 pixels, about 100 pixels per inch at full size, as an RGB file with no bleed or crop marks. Poster generation bills at twice the flyer rate. The research poster template page lists the layouts.

Know the rough edges before you rely on them. A few layouts have image figure blocks that cannot be filled, a process chain drops a sixth step, a chart’s axis labels can collide with its legend and a table caption can be clipped, so check each figure on the canvas. Charts and diagrams are added from the Add items panel, which the guide to adding charts and diagrams to a flyer walks through, since posters live inside the flyer builder.