What is an academic research poster?
A poster is a visual communications tool that will help you to easily and effectively disseminate your research to a wide audience. An effective poster gets your point across in a concise and focused way; it uses images, graphs/charts, tables and other visual strategies with minimal supporting text.
Before you get started on creating a poster, you should always check with your research mentor to review the appropriate design conventions for your discipline. You may consider using our Blank Poster Templates.
Components
What should be included in a poster?
- Key Elements
- Title: Project title
- Author(s): Your name, names of research collaborator(s), mentor name and department/institution
- Introduction/Objectives: Introduce your topic and outline your research question
- Methods: Briefly describe how you conducted your research
- Results or Findings: Present your expected, preliminary, and final findings
- Discussion: Explain the significance of your findings
- Conclusions/Future Directions: Summarize key takeaways and identify potential next steps
- Acknowledgements: Include any sources of funding you received to engage in the research project
Design
What is the best design, layout and size?
- formatting your poster
- Margins: Set at least 1 inch, elements may be cut off in the printing process if there is no margin.
- Font size: Title should be at least 70pt. Text should be 18pt or larger so it can be read from 3-5ft. away.
- Use high resolution images: Reccomended 200-200dpi range.
* If OUR is covering your poster printings costs, your poster cannot be larger than 42 inches x 36 inches *
Gallery
Resources
On Campus Poster Printing
Visit the University Copy website to place your poster order. If your department will be covering your printing costs, please coordinate with your faculty mentor/department EA.
Students presenting at the Fall Research Colloquium do not have to pay for their poster. Instructions on how to order your poster will be emailed to you. If you are presenting a poster at the Fall Colloquium, you should use a 36x42 format, portrait orientation (templates available here).