Better Posters: Plan, Design and Present an Academic Poster

by Zen Faulkes

Overview

Better posters mean better research.

Engaging and easy to read... Every lab should have a copy of Better Posters. The book should make conference poster sessions better for everyone – those presenting and those attending. Thank goodness someone wrote it! —Stephen Heard, Scientist Sees Squirrel

'This book should be in the library of any university with a graduate program or on the shelf of any researcher who makes research posters/oversees students who make research posters.' —Kristin Briney, Data Ab Initio

Distilling over a decade of experience from the popular Better Posters blog, Zen Faulkes will help you create a clear and informative conference poster that delivers maximum impact.

Academics have used posters to share research for more than five decades, and tens of thousands of posters are presented at conferences every year. Despite the popularity of the format, no in-depth guide has been available on how to create and deliver compelling conference posters. From over-long titles, tiny text and swarms of logos, to bad font choices, chaotic colour schemes and blurry images – it's easy to leave viewers confused about your poster's message.

The solution is Better Posters: a comprehensive guide to everything you need to know – from writing a title and submitting an abstract, to designing the poster and finally presenting it in the poster session. Your conference poster will be one of your first research outputs, and the poster session is your first introduction to a professional community. Making a great poster develops the skills to create publications, reports, outreach and teaching materials throughout your career.

This book also has material for conference organizers on how to make a better poster session for their attendees.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781784272357
Publisher:	Pelagic Publishing
Publication date:	05/24/2021
Pages:	300
Product dimensions:	6.96(w) x 9.75(h) x 0.77(d)

About the Author

Zen Faulkes is a professor of biology. He has written the popular Better Posters blog for over eleven years.

Table of Contents

Foreword Echo Rivera ix

Preface xii

Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction 1

1 Poster design: the short form 3

Part I For viewers

2 Attending a poster session 9

Part II For presenters

3 Why posters? 17

4 Design thinking 23

5 Early preparation 39

6 Narrative thinking 55

7 Visual thinking and graphic design 64

8 Figures 82

9 Presenting data 92

10 Colors 121

11 Beyond paper 133

12 Text and type 142

13 Layout 157

14 Grids 160

15 Background 177

16 Title bars 179

17 Blocks of text 188

18 Sections 201

19 Images and graphics, revisited 210

20 Fine-tuning V 215

21 Before you print 221

22 Printing 226

23 Travel 232

24 Networking and presentation 234

Part III For organizers

25 After the conference 248

26 Poster session planning 259

27 Conference website resources 266

28 During the conference 269

Part IV What next?

29 Constant improvement 273

Afterword 276

References 278

Index 294