Check the conference organiser’s instructions

Check the organiser’s instructions for the poster’s size and format. Will your poster be presented in a space that requires a portrait or landscape format? The university’s template has both. Landscape format is preferable because most of the poster will be at eye level.

Tip! Make sure you get the poster number (if there is one) from the organisers in advance, so you can print it on the poster.

Make sure you have enough time

Remember to leave enough time for corrections after reviewing, editing, making last-minute changes and printing your poster.

Printing your poster

To print your poster, go to the university’s procured printing company. Read more about this on the employee web External link. (in Swedish).

Transport

Think about how you are going to transport the poster to the conference. Are you going to fold it or roll it? If you use the procured printer, they will deliver your poster in a tube you can also use to take it to the conference.

Handouts

Sometimes your readers may appreciate a printed handout. This could contain a miniature version of your poster or provide more detailed information about your work as an illustrated narrative. The university’s media portal has design templates for creating simple handouts.

Target audience

Who is your audience at the conference where your poster will be shown? Experts or novices? Adapt your information to your target audience. If they are specialists, technical jargon or acronyms may work, but if you have a general audience you should try to minimise or eliminate jargon and use more understandable terminology.

Start from your abstract

In many cases, organisers require you to submit an abstract before the conference. This abstract should tell readers why your work is important, your methods and your conclusions. It can help you shape the outline of your poster, which could be regarded as an illustrated abstract.

A visual presentation

Start by thinking of your poster as a showcase for your work rather than the opportunity to present it in full. A poster is not intended to be a scientific article.

A good poster is both eye-catching and informative. You may feel as if you are ‘dumbing down’, but if you are not visible you will not be read. Your aim is to get visitors to stop at your poster.

Start by deciding the primary message you want your poster to convey to your audience. State this in one or two sentences. You can also choose to design your poster to address a central issue. In this case, you should clearly state the question and the answer on the poster.

A poster is primarily a visual presentation, so try to find ways to illustrate your methods and results using pictures. Use images, diagrams and the graphical elements in the template to direct the viewer’s gaze, rather than trying to explain your message with text alone.

Checklist, content

Ensure your poster clearly illustrates the:

• Title
• Authors’ names
• Subject
• Why this is important research
• The research you have conducted
• Your conclusions

Evaluate and edit

Tip! Evaluate your work in 60 seconds. If your primary message cannot be conveyed within one minute, you should redesign your poster. Ask for help with designing and proofreading of your poster, preferably from someone who is not involved in your research.

A balanced poster usually has about 40% illustrations, 20% text and 40% empty space. The space between the poster’s elements can be used both to separate different sections and for grouping materials. It is better to use empty space than dividing lines.

Use a logical structure with a column format, so readers can navigate your poster’s contents easily.

Make all the poster’s visual elements large enough to be seen from a distance of two to four metres. This includes large text, enlarged photos, simplified graphs and diagrams and simple drawings/illustrations.

The university's PowerPoint template provides help and makes it easier to create your poster.

Format

Landscape format is generally preferable to portrait format when you design a poster, as the reader will have a greater proportion of the poster area at eye level.

Organisation

Decide a logical order for the material you are going to present and organise the material in sections. These will become your columns, which makes for a better flow when reading your poster.

Numbering the sections is a common way of helping readers understand, but white space can also be used creatively to indicate the flow of information.

Put the most important part of your message first. This is usually the conclusion, so the best place for this is in the top left corner of your poster.

As a basis for your poster’s layout, the following positions should be used:

• Title at the top
• Authors and co-authors below, top
• Short introduction with conclusions in the top left corner
• Methods and results fill the remaining space

Paragraph format, font and font size

Use left-aligned text and a maximum of 5 lines per paragraph.

A poster must be readable from a distance of about two metres. This is to prevent crowding around the poster if people need to stand close to see it, which may discourage other interested people. All text should therefore have letters at least 1 cm high that can be easily read from a distance of two metres. The university's PowerPoint template has predefined text sizes that are adapted to be read from a distance.

A sans serif font is the best font for text blocks that are suitably short for a poster. Use sans serif fonts such as Arial, which is also predefined in the PowerPoint template, rather than serif fonts such as Times or Courier.

Using several different fonts on one poster can distract the reader from its content and should only be used in exceptional cases. If you want to use multiple fonts, choose a maximum of two and use them throughout the poster. If you choose to use two fonts, the use of sans serif fonts in headings and serif fonts in paragraphs is a classic combination.

AVOID CAPITALISATION IN TEXTS LONGER THAN ONE LINE, BECAUSE THEY ARE MORE DIFFICULT TO READ. (As you can see in this example.)

Colours

Do not distract the reader by using too many colours. Choose the colour scheme in the university's design template and use it consistently. If you use too many colours, the reader will assume you used them for a reason and try to work out why. Too many colours may also detract from the message your illustrations should convey.

Use a high contrast between the text and background colour. In the template, you can choose pale, pastel background colours to give your poster coherence.

Avoid dark backgrounds with pale lettering. Do not red and green next to each other or red text on a green background (or vice versa), to avoid problems for people with colour blindness.

NB! The printed poster will not exactly reproduce the colours you see on your monitor, and may also differ from the proofs.

Highlight your material

Use dark or black edges with discretion. If you need to emphasise a paragraph, use the coloured plates or frames provided in the PowerPoint template.

Use highlighting techniques sparingly. You can emphasise text by using bold or italics, but not underlining as this reduces readability.

To emphasise specific items on the poster, use the coloured plates or frames provided in the template.

Title

Select the words in the title with care. The title must be short but also reveal some of your results or your conclusion.

The title should be readable from a distance of 4-6 metres, so it should be around 4-5 cm tall. This is approximately a 96-point size, or 48 points enlarged by 200% when printed. If the words in the title are well chosen, they will make the audience want to find out more about your work.

Authors

Make sure the authors' names are smaller than the title, as they do not need to be visible from a distance. A good size is 40 points. Names make it easier for participants to talk to you when you are standing by your poster or to look you up afterwards.

Author titles are usually omitted on a poster.

Author affiliation

Try to group authors’ names and affiliations so that readers can easily identify who is from where.

Poster number

If the poster will be presented at a conference, it should include a session number. This is usually placed at the top of the poster, to the left or right or in the centre.

Conclusions

Placing your conclusions in the upper left corner of your poster is a good idea. They should be one of the first things a reader sees. Use a colour plate or frame from the PowerPoint template to differentiate your conclusions from other material.

Present your conclusions in a way that considers the readers’ perspective. Who did what? Avoid using the passive form; use the active voice in your text.

Body text

The body text on your poster should be readable from a distance of around two metres. Use letters about 1 cm tall so they are readable from that distance. This is about a 40-point size. Use bold for section headings (such as the Introduction).

Use left-aligned text in paragraphs because it is easier to read.

Use the active voice in your text and try to limit the poster to 250 words in total. Remove all refences and fillers, such as “see figure ..." and try to use the figures and illustrations to convey your message, rather than words. Use phrases rather than complete sentences.

Avoid using abbreviations apart from standard forms such as m, kg, h and yr. Abbreviations that need explaining make reading more difficult. Nor should you use any special abbreviations you created for your study.

Try to limit each element of text to no more than 50 words. Divide your text into sections with a maximum of five lines.

Use bullet points to break up text blocks that are too long.

Captions

Make sure that each figure, table and image have a caption that describes what it shows. The PowerPoint template has a fixed format. All text must be horizontal, not vertical.

References

References should preferably be on your handout instead of your poster. If you have references on your poster, place them a long way down and use the predefined element in the PowerPoint template.

Try to make your figures as self-explanatory as possible and reduce the amount of data to the absolute minimum required to support your conclusions.

Illustrations

Do not be afraid to use illustrations. They allow you to highlight important details and can often be better than photographs. As a rule of thumb, illustrations should be easy to see/read from a distance of two metres. Make sure you get permission if you use someone else's illustrations.

Diagrams and tables

Try to avoid using tables as they usually require too much attention and focus from the reader.

Do not reuse graphs and tables from an article for your poster without editing them, as they probably contain too much detail for a poster. Remove all non-essential information from graphs and tables.

Stick to simple 2D line charts and avoid 3D graphs. 3D graphs may be attractive, but they tend not to add anything to your message.

Use contrasts and colours for emphasis, preferably in the university’s profile colours. These are also in the PowerPoint template. Use colours to differentiate between groups of data in a graph. Avoid using patterns or open bars in histograms.

Figures are a good way to present data because they are easier to understand than tables.

For line charts, emphasise data points and minimise connecting lines. Use distinct bars and limit the size of the dividing lines in bar charts. Use contrasting colours for adjacent parts of pie charts in the university’s profile colours.

All labels should be horizontal and readable from a distance of two metres. Try not to use wording like “See figure 1” in your text.

Photographs

Remember that images from websites may have a low resolution. Poster images should have a resolution of at least 150 dpi at 100% of the size they will be used on the poster. Make sure you respect image rights if you use someone else’s photos.

You may need to edit or crop a photograph so its important features are obvious to the reader. Enlarge it so the details are visible at a distance of two metres.

Poster sessions are often held in rooms with bright fluorescent lighting. If accurate colours are important, balance these colours for use with fluorescent lamps.

Photographs should have a short, clear description so that a reader immediately understands they show. The PowerPoint template has a predefined element for captions.