How many figures on a research poster? 40 boards counted

Most research posters carry one figure. Counted on 13 September 2026 across the 40 finished A0 research poster examples on this site, 32 boards have exactly one numbered figure, six have two and two have three, 50 figures in all. Column charts are 32 of the 49 drawn charts. The corpus is this site’s own set of boards for fictional studies, and it grows as boards are added, so read the counts as a description of finished work in several disciplines, not a survey of conference posters.

What was counted

The 40 boards cover eight health and clinical studies, fifteen in the social sciences, twelve in the natural and physical sciences, three in engineering and computing, and two student boards: a thesis defence and an undergraduate project. 24 are portrait at 1656 by 2340 pixels, 16 landscape at 2340 by 1656. Each is stored as the finished HTML of the board.

Two things were counted on each board:

• Figures, as numbered captions that begin “Figure 1”, “Figure 2” and so on. Participant flow diagrams, protocol blocks and key number panels are not counted as figures, because the boards do not number them.
• Charts, as the chart drawings themselves, with their kind read from how they are drawn: bars with rounded ends that share a baseline on the left are horizontal bars, rounded bars that rise from the bottom are columns, and unfilled lines with plotted points are line charts. There are 49 charts and 50 figures, because one figure is a photograph panel, not a chart.

The area of each chart drawing was also measured as a share of the whole board. The table below this article gives the counts by discipline group.

Figures by discipline

The median is one figure in every discipline group except the two student boards, which carry two each. Health and clinical boards average 1.25, the social sciences 1.2, the natural sciences 1.25 and engineering exactly one. Discipline changes the amount of text far more than the number of figures: the natural science boards have the longest median text, 1,082 words, and the social science boards 840, yet both settle on one figure. More writing, in other words, does not bring more charts.

The multi figure boards are all portrait. All 16 landscape boards carry exactly one figure, while 8 of the 24 portrait boards carry two or three. A portrait board stacks columns deep enough for a second chart below the first; a landscape board spends its width on a results band beside a single chart.

The two three figure boards are both outcome studies with more than one question to answer. The clinical trial poster shows completion by arm at each dose, then the difference by distance from the clinic, then cumulative completion by week. The criminology cohort does the same with outcomes, subgroups and time. Each figure answers a different question, which is the only good reason for a third.

The chart kinds that appear

Of the 49 charts, 32 are columns, 10 are lines and 7 are horizontal bars. No board uses a pie, donut, radar, waterfall or waffle chart, even though a chart figure on an A0 layout offers ten kinds.

The choice follows the claim. Columns compare groups: incidence by region on the epidemiology poster, hours before and after on the economics board. Lines show change along a continuous axis: F1 difference by speaker birth decade on the linguistics poster, load against deflection on the engineering test. Horizontal bars carry long category labels: the health economics board uses one for a one way sensitivity analysis, where each bar is a named model input.

That restraint is what poster guidance asks for. Edward Tufte’s argument for spending ink on data rather than decoration matters more on a board read at arm’s length than in a journal, and the Clemson graduate symposium rubric scores whether “graphs, tables and illustrations are engaging and enhance understanding” as one of eight criteria.

How much of the board the main figure takes

On most boards the chart is modest. The median largest chart drawing covers 5.1 percent of the board area, and the median board gives all its charts together 5.5 percent. That is the plot itself, not counting the caption or the block around it, and on a 841 by 1189 millimetre sheet it is still a chart the size of a large book.

Five boards break the pattern completely. On the human geography, machine learning, lab findings, linguistics and physics boards, one chart takes 23 to 30 percent of the board. All five are line charts, and all five are built on hero figure layouts designed around a single dominant chart. Their median text is 729 words, against 911 on the other 35 boards. Two of the five are landscape and three portrait, so a hero chart is not tied to one orientation. A further six boards give their largest chart 10 to 15 percent, and four of those six sit on timeline and key point layouts: the archaeology and case report boards on a timeline rail, and the social work and thesis defence boards on an icon key points layout.

The pattern is a choice between two kinds of poster. A board where the finding is a shape, a curve that bends or a gap that opens, can let the chart carry it and cut about 180 words. A board where the finding is a set of comparisons keeps a modest chart and more text.

Tables against charts

Four boards are built on table led layouts: economics, health economics, the engineering test and the legal research board. Every one of the four still carries one chart. The table holds the values a reader might want to look up, such as costs per patient, failure load by specimen or median sentence by court; the chart holds the one comparison the board wants remembered. None of the four captions its table as a figure, which is why the table does not appear in the figure count.

One more figure is worth noting. On the geology board, Figure 2 is a core photograph panel whose caption says the photographs are held at the state core library and are not reproduced on the board. That board sits on a layout with image figure blocks, and seven image figure blocks on four A0 layouts have no upload control, so they cannot be filled with a photograph.

Journal figure rules make a useful check before any chart goes on a board. PLOS ONE, for example, asks for figure text in 8 to 12 point at final size. On an A0 board, where one canvas pixel prints at 1.44 points, the same readability rule means axis labels several times larger.

A figure plan for your poster

1. Start with one figure that shows the main finding, and write its caption as the finding.
2. Add a second only for a different question, a subgroup, a dose or a time course, and only on a portrait board with room to stack it.
3. Pick the chart by the claim: columns to compare groups, a line for change over a continuous axis, horizontal bars for long labels.
4. Decide whether the finding is a shape. If it is, give that chart a fifth of the board and cut the text to around 750 words.
5. Keep lookup values in a table and the remembered comparison in the chart.

For how many words the rest of the board should carry, see how many words on a research poster, and for the choice of board shape see landscape vs portrait poster.

How to use this plan

The scientific poster maker page shows the two A0 canvases and the blocks a board is built from, including the figure block. To put a chart or diagram onto a design and fill it with your own values, follow adding charts and diagrams, which uses the same builder as posters. The epidemiology poster is a clean model of a one figure landscape board.