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STUDENT AND EARLY CAREER PROFESSIONAL UPDATE
Poster Tips from GSA 2021 Section

Meeting Student Poster Winners

Juliet Ryan-Davis, California Institute of Technology; Aaron When formatting your reference list, refer to the most recent
Kilmury, University of Manitoba; Alex Nazzaro, College of the edition of the reference style you are using and be sure all your
Holy Cross; Justin Sharpe, University of Texas at San Antonio reference entries have consistent formatting. Finally, do not wait
till the last day to print. You might realize that there are issues
1. What advice would you give a student who is presenting a with things like colors and formatting. There are ways of setting
poster for the first time? the colors in your file to match the printer; someone who knows
Talk through your poster with someone who is not familiar with the features of that printer can help.
your project. This could be a non-scientist or family member. It
helps to see what the logical flow of the poster is to someone else 3. Do you have any suggestions for how to draw attention to
so that you can adjust the content to emphasize important points your poster?
with a box or bold font. Consider asking some of the people whose papers you cited to
Since you typically do not have much time to present, make sure come talk to you about your poster. They can offer insight, and
to focus on the most important parts of your research. Often, the they will usually be excited to talk to you about a topic they have
questions you receive will give you an opportunity to share other worked on. Ask your advisor to introduce you someone at the
aspects of the research. meeting who is working on similar topics before the poster session
Poster presentations are also an excellent time to get some insights to put you at ease and help you be less nervous when they come to
on your project. Showing what you know from your research is just your poster.
the start—people who talk to you during your poster presentation You might also ask a friend or two to come see your poster presen-
often have interesting questions or comments that can teach you a lot tation toward the beginning of the session. This can help calm your
about your topic. This can be a great time to ask questions of experts nerves down, and it catches the attention of people passing by who
on the subject, and it can be especially exciting when you have read might be interested if they overhear you talking about your project.
someone’s paper and they come talk to you.
Finally, prepare an elevator speech on your career aspirations 4. Were there any strategies you found helpful when answering
and practice it on your peers. These speeches should be no more questions about your poster?
than one minute and should give a quick jargon-free overview of Present your poster to your advisor(s) or a fellow student and
your interests. write down the questions that they ask. Prepare to fully explain
your methods and interpretations, why they were chosen, what led
2. What tips would you give another student who is designing you to your conclusions, and perhaps why other currently accept-
a poster (software, formatting, or printing)? able methods or techniques were not feasible for your study. Be
Adobe Illustrator can be used to create posters and then export prepared to address what you may have done differently if you had
them to a pdf. Other options include Affinity Designer and the chance to do it again and where you see areas for improvement
PowerPoint. If problems come up, the most helpful resources con- for future work.
cerning navigating software and finding answers to formatting Talking through your poster in advance will help with the
issues are YouTube video tutorials and community support pages. questions, discussion, and presentation on-site. If you have gone
For formatting, starting with figures can be helpful because through the poster many times, you will have a better idea of what
these will take up a lot of space. Next, create headings for each to focus on to answer specific questions. Skipping around the
section to keep your poster organized. Under your title, you might poster based on peoples’ questions becomes easier the more times
consider adding a short description that gets the main point of you have talked through the poster.
your poster across.
Attendees will be drawn to posters with large figures and rela- 5. What factors influenced you the most in deciding how to
tively little text, since it is easier to absorb information through a organize your poster?
detailed and adequately labeled figure rather than reading large One resource for getting started on a poster is to look through
blocks of text. For text size, 20 to 24 point is suggested. Too many other examples. You might walk the halls of your department and
different fonts can be confusing and distracting. You might choose take notes on how other posters were laid out. Consider looking
one for the headings/title and a second for the text and figure cap- online for ideas on organization, including this resource: https://
tions, but not more than two if possible. colinpurrington.com/tips/poster-design by Colin Purrington.
Consider using black, white, and gray for text and text back- When deciding how to organize a poster, you should consider
grounds—colored text and colored text backgrounds can be the most influential factors to be (1) the required poster dimen-
very hard to read for people with vision issues. Online resources sions, (2) the quantity of figures you need to concisely present
include color palettes for colorblind people, and there is a phone your research and how large they must be to be legible from a
app that uses the camera to show you what something would look one-meter distance, and (3) how large text boxes need to be so
like to people with different types of colorblindness to make sure that they are legible from a one-meter distance, since the font size
that everything is readable and accessible. will determine how much information can be included.

22 GSA Today | September 2021