Finding Poster Examples
- Better Posters BlogA good resource for tips, examples, and critiques of existing academic posters, run by Prof. Zen Faulkes of University of Texas Rio Grade Valley.
- DigitalCommons NetworkA list of subject categories can be found at the bottom of the page and, once in the chosen subject area, a search for "poster" should bring up relevant results.
- Undergraduate Research CommonsA section of DigitalCommons specifically for undergraduate research; posters can be found by clicking into a relevant subject area and searching for the word "poster".
The #betterposter model
Mark Morrison, as a psychology PhD student at Michigan State University, developed a "better" research poster in 2019. This model explicitly states the central message in extremely large letters at the center of the poster, with other information pushed to the margins. Morrison has provided templates for this model via Open Science Framework:
Consider Your Message
Before starting your poster, ask yourself:
What is the central message I'm hoping to convey with this poster?
This could be why the research that you did was important, a particularly surprising or interesting result, or how you plan to expand on the research in the future. This should be your "North Star" as you develop your poster, meaning any choices you make about the poster's content and design should be in support of that central message.
General Formatting Guidelines
Research posters, by and large, follow a general set of guidelines without all being the same, much in the same way that research papers often follow a familiar structure:
- The poster's title (usually centered at the top) followed the names of the authors, with each author's title, associated department or academic institution, and their email address
- The content of the poster is broken up into sections with accompanying headings, just as would be found in a research paper
- This content is then laid out in 3 or 4 columns or equal (or nearly-equal) width
Create a Visual Outline
It's a good idea to outline the key points you'll need to include while making a rough sketch of the poster.
Image from Indiana University's IT Training Tips blog
This will help you figure out how much information you'll be able to include, what kind of graphs or charts you may need to make, and how the content will look one the poster when finished. No need to get fancy, this is just a visual outline to get you thinking about the process.