Posters are an important means to communicate engineering and science. One common situation is to communicate research, such as the projects from an NSF REU. While a formal talk might seem to be a better way to communicate your work, presenting a poster does offer advantages. For instance, unlike a scientific presentation in which you simultaneously have to connect with different types of audiences [1], the individual interaction of a poster session makes it possible for you to tailor your communication to each visitor. Second, many audience members will feel more comfortable asking you questions during a one-on-one visit to your poster (as opposed to before a crowd at the end of formal talk). Third, presenting a poster is more personal than giving a formal talk. Not surprising, stories abound of engineers and scientists initiating collaborations during a poster session.
For a poster to communicate the project, though, the poster first has to orient the audience to the project's subject and purpose. Such an orientation is not simple. One reason concerns audience. Besides having experts in your field, you often have scientists and engineers from other fields and sometimes have non-technical audiences. Other reasons that make orienting the audience difficult concern the occasion. The noise of a poster session and the distractions of people milling about the hall pose a challenge for reading. Also, the poster needs to serve two situations: (1) when you are standing there and using the graphics to communicate your work, and (2) when you are not there and the audience is gathering the story of your work from the poster alone.
So then what makes for an effective poster? This question is not easy to address because the expectations by the audience vary significantly from discipline to discipline. For instance, an audience of a medical poster session usually expects more wording on a poster than an audience of an engineering poster session expects. Nonetheless, this webpage presents general guidelines that would apply to most situations in science and engineering
For a poster to communicate the project, though, the poster first has to orient the audience to the project's subject and purpose. Such an orientation is not simple. One reason concerns audience. Besides having experts in your field, you often have scientists and engineers from other fields and sometimes have non-technical audiences. Other reasons that make orienting the audience difficult concern the occasion. The noise of a poster session and the distractions of people milling about the hall pose a challenge for reading. Also, the poster needs to serve two situations: (1) when you are standing there and using the graphics to communicate your work, and (2) when you are not there and the audience is gathering the story of your work from the poster alone.
So then what makes for an effective poster? This question is not easy to address because the expectations by the audience vary significantly from discipline to discipline. For instance, an audience of a medical poster session usually expects more wording on a poster than an audience of an engineering poster session expects. Nonetheless, this webpage presents general guidelines that would apply to most situations in science and engineering
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First, narrow the scope and adjust the depth of your work so that the poster does not overwhelm the audience.
The biggest mistake made with posters is that the presenter tries to present too much. That mistake might take the form of too broad a scope that does not permit a satisfying depth or too much depth that does not allow for a wide enough scope for the audiences to recognize the value of the work [1]. Although you might have done four experiments, consider focusing the poster on the most important one or two. The goal in a poster presentation is not to impress the audience with how much work you did, but to communicate the most important result(s) of the work to as many people in the poster session as time allows. During the session, after you have communicated your main story from the poster, you can refer the audience to a QR code on your poster with additional work. |
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Second, craft the title so that it quickly orients the audiences of the session.
1. Craft a title that shows the scope of the work for the widest audience of the session and not just the experts. 2. Make the title the most prominent block of text on the poster (usually centered or left justified at the top). Be sure to allow space above and below the title so that it is not crowded [2]. Where text borders white is where you receive emphasis. 3. Do not typeset the title in all capital letters. Text set in all capital letters is difficult to read because readers recognize many words by their shapes (for instance the ascenders t and h, and the descenders ). 4. As shown in the title of the sample poster shown here [2], use small words such as of, on, and the to separate details in the title. 5. While phrase titles are most common, some scientists and engineers prefer sentence titles for posters, especially those that present one main result. In such titles, state the result in the title and capitalize the words as you would in a sentence. Because the sentence title is a stand-alone, as opposed to being part of a paragraph, the period is often dropped. |
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Third, design the layout of the poster so that it is easy for readers to navigate.
Besides orienting the audience to the subject and purpose of the research, an effective poster makes it easy for visitors to navigate the content. You should understand that not everyone will read the entire poster from beginning to end. Many will read only the introduction (motivation and research question), and then jump to the results. Given that many readers will skip from one part of the work to another, you should consider having sections that are easy to locate, such as in the example poster shown [4]. In a research poster, those headings typically reflect the expected parts of the research process: hypothesis (often placed in an introduction), methods, results, and discussion. |
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Fourth, make the poster easy to read.
1. Given the distractions that occur while reading posters in a symposium, the poster should not contain large blocks of text. Avoid paragraphs with more than four sentences. Neither should the poster contain long sentences. 2. As shown in the example poster for this section [4], be generous with graphics that support the content. 3. Choose lettering that is large enough to be read from the distance that the audience will stand. 4. Select enough contrast between the text and the background that the text is legible. You should choose a dark text against a light background or perhaps the reverse. Avoid colors with middle levels of darkness for either the type or background. 5. Be wary about using a photograph as the background, especially if the photograph has places that compromise the contrast with the type. |
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Fifth, consider a #betterposter approach.
In 2009, in an effort to make scientific posters communicate more effectively, a psychology student initiated a movement (#betterposters) in which one third of the poster was dedicated to QR code linking to a website and a single sentence that stated the most important takeaway of the poster [5]. Building on this work, the MIT Communication Lab initiated a second movement (#evenbetterposters) to add flexibility to the original idea [6]. Shown on the right is an example poster illustrating this approach [7]. |
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Answer ten questions that arise from the text on this page.
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References
- Alley, Michael, The Craft of Scientific Presentations, 2nd ed. (New York: Springer-Verlag, 2013).
- Couch, Eric, Jesse Christophel, Eric Hohlfeld, and Karen Thole, "Cooling Effects of Dirst Purge Holes on the Tips of Gas Turbine Blades" (Blacksburg, VA: Virginia Tech, April 2003).
- Kaeli, Jeffrey W., Hanumant Singh, and Roy Armstrong, "Morphological Image Recognition of Deep Water Reef Corals" (Blacksburg, VA: Virginia Tech, October 2005).
- Christine Haas, Karen Thole, Michael Alley, and Joanna Garner, "Engineering Ambassador Network: Year 2," 2015 ASEE National Conference (Seattle: American Society of Engineering Education, June 2015).
- Andrea Khouzami, Kendall Mattson, and Michael Alley, “While faculty are divided on allowing STEM students to write with AI, most students want to learn how to use AI for their writing,”2026 ASEE St. Lawrence Regional Conference (Ithaca, NY: ASEE St. Lawrence Regional Conference, 25 April 2026).