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Presenting Your Research: Research Posters and Presenting to Different Audiences

Learn how to effectively communicate your research, either on a poster at a conference or verbally in a different setting. Topics include basic design principles, best poster practices, general design tool options and more.

Grinnell College Resources

In true KISS style, you can Keep It Simple by forgoing creating your own design and using the resources and templates provided to you for posters and graphic design. 

Accessibility

The most important thing to consider when designing your poster is accessibility. Accessible posters not only ensure that people with disabilities can engage with your research but they also tend to make your research more engaging and impactful for everyone.

The Yale University Guide "Academic Poster Resources; Accessibility" provides excellent resources on how to ensure your poster meets accessibility guide lines. 

Text

Things to consider before choosing a size for your text:

  • Remember the context that you are presenting your poster in. Is it a crowded conference exhibit hall or a digital venue? How close are people going to need to be to see your poster? This will help you determine the size of the text you need.
  • Sometimes, conferences will have specific guidelines on what size text should be used.
  • Different fonts will be bigger or smaller, even if they are set to the same size. 
  • Be consistent with your size. All heading should be the same size, all captions should be the same size, etc. 
  • The size of your poster will be key in deciding the size of your text. You can't fit 85 pt text on an 8.5/11 poster. 
  • If your text doesn't fit in your design, change the amount of text, not the size of the text.  

Here are some general guidelines for text size based on a 36 x 46 poster size: 

Title: 85 pt

Authors: 56pt

Headings: 36 pt

Body Text: 24 pt

Captions: 18 pt

  • Choose simple, professional fonts. Sans serif fonts typically read better and are viewable from a distance. 
  • Use the same font throughout the poster. Finding different fonts that look good together is much harder than it seems, and different fonts can be distracting and ruin the flow of the poster. If you are choosing to use different fonts, be sure to use the same font for each text element (i.e all body text is in the same font). 
  • Do not use all UPPER CASE type in your posters
  • Left-align text. Using fully justified text will create large gaps between some words and make it difficult to read.
     

Use font hierarchy. Title is the largest, headers are mid sized, and body text is the smallest. This helps the readers understand the flow of your research narrative and it looks professional. 
 

Title 

Heading 1

Heading 2

Heading 3

Body Text

Captions

 

Color Scheme

  • Make things easy on yourself. Use the Grinnell Branding color scheme as someone was paid a lot of money to make sure those colors were pleasing to look at together. 
  • It is always best to use a white background with black text to ensure that the contrast is high and text is legible
  • Stick to 2 or 3 colors. Anymore than that makes a poster look too busy and overwhelming
  • Be consistent with colors of like-elements in your design. All box outlines should be the same color, all heading boxes should be the same color, all text of the same hierarchy should be the same color etc. 
  • If you have images or other items with colors already, use the color picker or eyedropper tool to pick out colors from that image and apply to the theme of your poster. 
  • Do not use color to denote meaning in your poster. Many people are colorblind, and you do not want important insights of your work to be missed. 
  • What you see on your screen may not be what it looks like printed out. Use CMYK color profile to avoid issues. 

Space and Content

You have to hit the right balance when it comes to the amount of space and content that appear on your poster. Too much content is a common issue, and it makes it hard for people to engage with your research. Too little (a rarity in research posters) can do your research a disservice. In general, there are two rules of thumb to follow:

  1. If you can't decide if you have too much content - you have too much content. Less is (almost) always more when it comes to research posters
  2. Poster should have roughly 20% text, 40% visuals like figures or images and 40% space (margins, space between lines of text, space between columns, etc). This rule can vary greatly by discipline, but typically good posters have far less text than first time poster makers expect. 
     

Flow & Layout

Adhere to a typical layout so readers can easily follow the “flow” of your narrative. Please do not choose the layout as the place you “get funky with it”. ​​​​​​

  • In Western cultures, people expect things to start at the top left and work their way down and to the right. 
  • Visual indicators to show the end of a column is helpful - even if it is just white space!
  • If you are "getting funky with it", use visual indicators to show people the flow. Once again, it is strongly recommended that you do not do this.