Creating Poster Presentations for the Sciences

Category: Working with sources

Purpose: General Interest

Audience(s): Undergraduate student

Websites

Research Posters: Creation, Design, & Best Practices

A libguide from the University of Toronto.

Creating an Effective Scientific Poster [PDF]

This document was adapted from work by the University of Guelph Teaching Support Services and the Environmental Biology Graphic Studio, and prepared by Jennifer L. Spall. This is an excellent, linear guide to preparing a scientific poster and is appropriate for undergraduate students.

Research Posters: Concisely tell the story of your research with visual language

This guide from The University of Notre Dame presents a straight-forward approach to designing a poster through a minimalist interface and the option of using it as a digital "to do" list when working on the creation of a research poster.

"Academic Posters" Module by The Learning Portal: College Libraries Ontario

A step-by-step guide to creating academic posters including design tips and free resources.

Creating Effective Poster Presentations

This website created by three American science professors provides a comprehensive, yet concise, overview of how to create effective posters from defining your message, to planning your poster, to your poster's aesthetics, to how to effectively present your poster during the session. If you are only going to visit one resource on creating your poster, make it this one.

Designing Conference Posters

This webpage by former evolutionary biologist and current photographer Colin Purrington, reads like a long, humourous, but exceedingly useful essay on poster design, both good and bad. He offers novel ideas for attracting attention to your poster, as well as a number of PowerPoint and OpenOffice poster templates.

Design of Scientific Posters

This webpage by Michael Alley, an Associate Professor of Engineering Communication at Penn State, is short on text but long on examples and PowerPoint templates

University of Michigan Poster Presentations

The above guide includes How-To and Poster Samples

Article: Ten Simple Rules for a Poster Presentation

Poster Blog - Better Posters

University of Alabama Poster Presentation for Undergraduate Students

Videos

How to Present an Academic Research Poster

This video teaches you how to present your poster during a session.

Impactful Scientific Posters - The Basics

This short video from the American Chemical Society is a good introduction to creating effective posters.

Image Sources

Make sure to give credit for images by citing them using the same citation style as the rest of your poster.

Pics4Learning

Google Advanced Image Search

Google Advanced Image Search allows you to limit results by usage rights. Choose "free to use or share" to make sure you may use the retrieved images on your poster.

Wikimedia Commons

All of the images on Wikimedia Commons are freely usable. For more information, please visit this page on reusing content outside Wikimedia.

Flickr Creative Commons

Many photographs on Flickr are available for use under a Creative Commons license.

Free Icons by The Noun Project

Make your own infographic using Piktochart or Canva