The good people at ePosters asked if I would write something for their blog, They asked nicely, so I said, “I’ve been meaning to write about flash talks where people pitch their posters. How about that?” They said, “Okay.” đ And now it’s done and up.
Please visit ePosters for “How to pitch your poster in a flashy lightning talk.”
I hope you enjoy!
Over a year ago, I saved a few tweets about controversies that erupted over a couple of posters at a Society for Personality and Social Psychology conference. At the time, I was aware that there was a lot of discussion on social media but didn’t have the bandwidth to follow it closely.
Today I went looking for summaries of the controversy, and found a couple, which I have linked below. I don’t pretend that these summaries are complete or perfect, but I think they give at least a hint of what happened.
Most conferences do minimal screening of conference posters. They also do not necessarily do great monitoring of what goes up on unused poster boards, or whether people post the work they originally submitted. Normally, these are harmless.
But I do think it is worth asking under what conditions posters should be removed by conference organizers. If an organization doesn’t have policies for that, they should make them, and make them public, rather than trying to react on the fly.
The censorious Society for Personality and Social Psychology (13 February 2024)
SPSP censorship 2.0: “We are above the rules” (21 February 2024)
SPSP addresses convention poster concerns and outlines next steps (29 February 2024)
Some time ago, Greg Fell shared an interesting poster. (You may not be able to see it due to user settings.) I reached out to the creator, Anton PottegÄrd. He sent a slightly earlier version of this poster. Click to enlarge!
This poster does a couple of things. First, it draws inspiration from an existing design that people already understand. Second, it is memorable because it breaks from the conventional “journal article on a page” format. Others have used the text message style to create concert posters.
I don’t know exactly how this particular poster was created, but it is not hard to find websites that can emulate a chat.
What is not clear to me from this version is how someone is supposed to get the abstract mentioned at the bottom of the poster. I appreciate that the PDF icon looks like what you would see in a text message, but a short, easy to remember URL might have done the job, too.
Is this format appropriate to all posters? I don’t think so. This study has a simple result: “There’s no effect.” Many other projects are nowhere near as easy to summarize.
I am sure that some people will argue that this format is never appropriate for an academic poster, for two reasons.
First, it refers to data but does not show those data. While I understand the reasoning behind the “I must be able to personally inspect every data point before I can be convinced,” I don’t think that level of intense scrutiny is at all necessary for a conference poster. Save it for journal articles.
Second, there are no references. I am neutral on the subject, but forthcoming research shows that people think less of posters without at least one reference.
Anton wrote, “Overall, doing strong posters is very important to me!” He shared more that he created.
Here we have one that is very different in style from the one above:
While the first poster imitates the glossy interface that almost everyone has become familiar with, this second poster uses a hand drawn style. I like the style, but I worry that the summary in the top half is a little hard to read.
(The QR code at the bottom still works!)
And this is one of Anton’s favourites:
Same style as above, but the summary is shorter, larger, and more readable.
While this poster may have been on on Anton’s favoruites, I suspect it would not be everyone’s cup of tea. I personally wouldn’t make a poster that included someone on a toilet, but different strokes for different folks.
Pros: Memorable.
Cons: I don’t see that it as relevant to the content. If this was a paper about gastrointestinal function, I wouldn’t question it is much.
Critique: Protein biosynthesis
There are four categories:
Each of these categories gets a score from one to four, with one being worst (“Poor”) and four being the best (“Superior”). I’m going to present the criteria for each score in lists. At the end of this post, I’m going to put a version of this table that looks horrible on the blog, but that you can cut and paste easily.
Michael Peeters and colleagues have published a trio of papers, likely with more to come, developing and testing the rubric presented above. The papers mostly revolve around ensuring that the rubric above is reliable. If you are not in developing and validating assessments, the technical details in the paper probably need not concern you.
They also compare their rubric to two other methods of assessing posters: a more detailed, analytic rubric, and a more holistic assessment. The rubric presented above gives similar results to the analytic rubric, but the analytic rubric takes so much longer to score that is may not be practical. The holistic rating scheme was faster yet, but the reliability took a hit.
The bottom line to date: This rubric is a good mix of reliable and practical.
I’m interested in research on one of the new posters, which uses this rubric to try to tease apart what people are responding to when they make decisions about whether to give posters a “1” or a “4” in each category.
The team find three things lead to higher scores. In no particular order:
The poster also indicates poster type matters, but doesn’t go into details.
Khadka S, Holt K, Peeters MJ. 2024. Academic conference posters: Describing visual impression in pharmacy education. Exploratory Research in Clinical and Social Pharmacy 13: 100423. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rcsop.2024.100423
Peeters MJ, Gonyeau MJ. 2025. Comparing analytic and mixed-approach rubrics for academic poster quality. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 89(3): 101372. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajpe.2025.101372
Peeters MJ, Cor MK, Castleberry AN, Gonyeau MJ. 2025. Comparing holistic and mixed-approach rubrics for academic poster quality. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 89(4): https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajpe.2025.101379
Peeters MJ, Kaun MA, Schmude KA. 2025. Poster type enhances academic conference poster quality. AACP Annual Meeting 2025. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/391907265_2-yr-RevisedMAR_AACP2025 (ResearchGate login)
Peeters MJ, Cor MK. 2025. Academic conference poster quality rubric Version 2.0. AACP Annual Meeting 2025. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/391907268_MAR20_AACP2025 (ResearchGate login)
Michael J. Peeters on ResearchGate
| Rating | Score | Layout | Science-based order (IMRAD) | Use of graphics | Central message communicating (Wordy and / or busy) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Poor | 1 | Neither clean nor straightforward | Much disorder/chaotic, no references | Visually unpleasant | Very distracting and hard to review / understand (‘wall of text’; very busy and / or very wordy) |
| Sub-par | 2 | Much left to be desired / better (4 column?) | Some disorder (or missing), no references | Much left to be desired / better | Distracting and hard to quickly review/understand (majority was text; busy and / or wordy) |
| Acceptable | 3 | Some left to be desired / better (3 column?) | Disorder and references or order without references | Some left to be desired / better | Decent communication (some wordiness but could be quickly reviewed / understood) |
| Superior | 4 | Information clean, straightforward, organized | Good order and one or more references | Visually helpful, eye catching, pleasant to eyes | Concise communication (neither busy nor wordy, use of bullet points, easy, and quick to review/understand) |
It’s been a while since I’ve had the brainpower to pull one of these together. But now?
Both poster formats could reach high scores for all items, which indicated that mindful poster layout is essential for clear and engaging scientific dissemination.
The discussion is nuanced and helpful about what features make a poster stand out. Not too much text and well organized are a couple of points.
Bentsen L, Ăstergaard DE. 2025. What makes a good poster? Evaluating #BetterPoster and classic formats at a scientific cancer conference. Journal of Cancer Education: in press. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13187-025-02622-1
• • • • •
A journal article for conference organizers on improving poster sessions.
Ameen S, Chandran S, Tikka SK, Menon V, Praharaj SK, Sarkhel S. 2025. Streamlining poster sessions: Tips for organisers. Indian Journal of Psychiatry 67(5): 453-458. https://doi.org/10.4103/indianjpsychiatry.indianjpsychiatry_383_25
This draws a little too much from conferences in psychiatry, but many good suggestions here.
• • • • •
The carbon footprint of conferences is significant. This abstract is one of the first that I have seen that tries to estimate the costs of poster sessions.
The energy required to display posters on a TV screen was estimated to be 263 kWh in 2021 and 292 kWh in 2022, indicating a 93% reduction in energy consumption.
What the authors don’t appear to include in their estimates is the initial cost of conference venues buying equipment to show the posters.
Livingston AJ, Barquin DL, Margolin EJ, Wilcox Vanden Berg RN, Foreman JR, Peterson AC, Scales CD, Antonelli J, Lipkin ME, Faerber GJ, Preminger GM, Medairos RA. 2024. MP17-19 Beyond the science: The hidden costs of printed poster presentations at urology conferences. Journal of Urology 211(5S): e299. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.JU.0001008628.15460.84.19
• • • • •
Duncan and colleagues also have an article for conference organizers who want alternatives to the typical poster session. They tried a form of facilitated poster session. Attendees were asked during registration of they wanted to present in this facilitated format, and were grouped by some common element, often methods.
The format consisted of three parts:
This first trial with this format worked well. People found this format valuable. Still, the authors list multiple ways that they could improve it.
(C)hallenges included difficulty and confusion in session facilitation, insufficient facilitator guidance, and dissatisfaction with timing.
It isn’t clear to me what role the posters are playing in this whole event. Because the discussion sessions begins with lightning talks that are displayed as one to three slides, the posters feel superfluous.
Duncan S, Cawood A, Tuttle J, Putnam R. 2024. Organizing facilitated poster discussion sessions: Their inspiration, planning, and implementation at the C*Sci2023 Conference. Citizen Science: Theory and Practice 9(1): 16. https://doi.org/10.5334/cstp.716
• • • • •
And while we’re talking, conference organizers, could you please make seating available in poster sessions?
(P)oster sessions also often require presenters to stand on the spot for long periods of time, typically up to several hours. Furthermore, attendees interested in browsing posters often find themselves in small, cramped spaces without a place to sit. Many invisible disabilities, such as fibromyalgia, endometriosis and Ehlers–Danlos syndrome, make it incredibly challenging for individuals to stand for a prolonged period of time.
And those seats should be tall! Bar chairs! So a seated presenter is near eye level with someone standing to view a posters!
McClurg UL. 2024. A short guide to addressing accessibility at scientific conferences. Journal of Cell Science 137(10): https://doi.org/10.1242/jcs.261858
• • • • •
And one more dart at conference organizers who do this:
Also fun when the conference provides the incorrect poster board dimensions and then no one’s poster fits
That observation from Rheum Cat on Bluesky.
• • • • •
Francis provides a suggestion for how to get people to look at posters longer: recruit people to answer specific questions about a poster. This particular example had many people who agree to answer a survey about the poster, and only a “handful” declined.
While this is a good strategy in theory, I suspect recruiting people to answer survey questions about it may be hard in practice.
Francis C. 2025. Participatory poster in NACTA increases viewer involvement. NACTA Journal 69(TT): https://doi.org/10.56103/nactaj.v69iTT.281
• • • • •
Visiobo appears to be a technique to try to provide a “guided tour” of a poster when no presenter is present. I’m having a hard time imaging how it works at a glance. I suspect watching a video would help.
Huang K, Jiang J, Lu H, Zhou H, An P. 2025. Visiobo: Assisting poster reading for multiple viewers with a projector-enhanced physical agent. Proceedings of the Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. https://doi.org/10.1145/3706599.3720146
• • • • •
When asked to make a conference poster for a class, the most enjoyable thing was working with a partner. The least enjoyable thing was the actual presentation, for a variety of reasons.
Matthew F. 2025. Integrating conference poster presentations into a data science class. Paper presented at 2025 ASEE -GSW Annual Conference, Arlington, TX, Texas. https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--55061
• • • • •
More teaching with posters:
Friedlander H, Schaefer J. 2024. Utilizing a poster project as an assessment in an introductory abstract algebra course. PRIMUS 34(4): 392-412. https://doi.org/10.1080/10511970.2024.2312926
• • • • •
The value of conference posters in teaching is highlighted in this article:
Sims
D, Swales C, Aitken D. 2025. Student poster conferences as a formative,
authentic, inclusive and sustainable assessment practice. The Clinical Teacher 22(2): e70050. https://doi.org/10.1111/tct.70050
• • • • •
Other advantages of using posters for teaching? I’ve added some emphasis to this summary.
As a result of presenting their results through a poster, students reported a deeper understanding of their research topic, an increased ability to articulate scientific concepts, and a better understanding of how to create a visually appealing poster. ... Moreover, they saw the poster as an outlet for their creativity.
Wierzchowski
A, Wink D. 2024. Students’ experiences with the science and engineering
practices in a workshop-based undergraduate research experience. Journal of Chemical Education 101(6): 2266-2278. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.4c00035
• • • • •
For me, this answer to the question posed in this article’s title is obvious:
Endsley P, Martinkus H, Chrisman M, Marchello N, Skarbek A. 2025. Why should you attend conference poster sessions? Discover Education 4(1): 64. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44217-025-00462-1
But the attendees surveyed in this research suggested their motivations included
• • • • •
Whoever can find a way to make an engaging online poster session should have, like someone building a better mousetrap, the world beating a path to their door. This paper suggests some pathways forward:
Before the conference, participants expressed skepticism about networking opportunities for virtual attendees, which was confirmed in postconference survey comments. Virtual participants reported low engagement with virtual posters and recordings, and some struggled to find time to view virtual posters individually, which informed participants’ moderate satisfaction with virtual poster presentations
Wenger A, Bakkeren E, Granato E, Tecon R, Mitri S, Möbius W. 2025. MEEhubs2024: A hub-based conference on microbial ecology and evolution fostering sustainability. FEMS Microbiology Letters 372: in press. https://doi.org/10.1093/femsle/fnaf022
• • • • •
But maybe the engaging online poster session has already been created, and it’s... LinkedIn? The Royal Society of Chemistry’s annual virtual poster session, #RSCPoster, moved to LinkedIn in 2024 after years of being held on the “social media site that was named for a bird but that is now named for a adult movie rating,” and they reported their highest engagement ever.
Cotterell N, de Jongh PAJM, Noël T, Junkers T, Reddy CM, Anastasaki A, Randviir E. 2025. Celebrating 10 years of #RSCPoster. Chemical Science 16(7): 2950-2957. http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/D5SC90028J
Also, this article has some great cartoons from Errant Science!
• • • • •
Thurman and colleagues have a two part series on prepping for research posters.
This first part emphasizes that presenting a poster can be a challenge for students, because it represents a significant change in their relationship with their instructor, and with the material. Students may feel imposter syndrome from entering a professional environment for the first time.
This second part emphasizes time management in working with students. Their strategy is to lock down the text before doing any layout on the poster.
• • • • •
I have a like/hate relationship with templates. I understand why people want them, but existing templates are so often... mid. Now I have research that says why.
(W)hile templates help users converge to a final design quickly and partially alleviate the need for tedious decision-making, they may also lead to fixation and frustration when interactions do not support divergent thinking and flexible editing.
One point I appreciated was that just picking a template can be very time consuming. It’s like trying to decide what you want to watch on your streaming service: you probably spend as much time, if not more, looking at the option as watching your shows!
Nouraei F, Siu A, Rossi R, Lipka N. 2024. Thinking outside the box: Non-designer perspectives and recommendations for template-based graphic design tools. CHI EA ‘24: Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Article No. 326: 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1145/3613905.3650967
• • • • •
This substantive 70 page document on poster design was, somewhat to my surprise, a bachelor student’s thesis project. It identifies three big challenges for poster makers:
Paavonsalo S. 2025. The Poster Puzzle – The challenges in the process of creating scientific posters. https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:aalto-202501191323
• • • • •
More papers showing that conference oral presentations are more likely to be published than poster presentations.
39.4% of oral presentations are published compared to 30.5% of posters in urology.
Pursnani S, Feiertag J, Corey Z, Alzubaidi A, Lehman EB, Raman JD. 2024. Getting it across the finish line: Publication rates of abstracts presented at a major urologic conference. Urology 192: 188-194. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.urology.2024.06.058
• • • • •
In hip and joint medicine, 86.4% of oral presentations are published compared to 63.6% of posters. (Inexplicably, the authors claim in the abstract that 86.4% is “three times” 63.6%?)
Grace ZT, Imam N, Posner KM, Zaifman JM, Klein GR. 2024. Publication rates of poster and podium presentations at the American Association of Hip and Knee Surgeons annual meetings 2016 to 2019. The Journal of Arthroplasty 39(12): 3102-3106. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.arth.2024.06.019
• • • • •
In the field of hand surgery, 67.8% of oral presentations are published compare to 59.2% of posters.
Stoker T, Millar B, Fones L, Ilyas Asif. 2024. Sixty-two percent of abstracts from the American Association of Hand Surgery Annual Meeting 2017-2020 are later published. Tower Health Research Day. 49.
https://scholarcommons.towerhealth.org/th_researchday/2023-2024/online_posters/49
• • • • •
In radiology, 42.86% of oral presentations are published compared to 31.31% of posters.
Joarder I, Ahmadi S, Khosa F. 2024. Gender and racial diversity in relation to publication rates at the Canadian Association of Radiology annual scientific meetings 2016 to 2019. Canadian Association of Radiologists Journal 75(2): 313-322. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/08465371231210473
• • • • •
And an unspecified advantage in this conference abstract: “Abstracts that were published were more often presented orally(.)”
Schneider M, Dukaczewska A, van Beek DJ, Van den Heede K, Sharma G, Almquist M. 2024. 26 Talking the talk and posting the papers: Unveiling publishing patterns in ESES congress abstracts. British Journal of Surgery 111(Supplement_4): https://doi.org/10.1093/bjs/znae104.023
• • • • •
I don’t think I’ve shared this blog post from our friends at Mind the Graph about creating an award-winning poster before. In brief:
• • • • •
From our friends at Animate Your Science comes An introvert’s guide to surviving a conference scientific poster session. In brief:
This summary doesn’t do justice to some of the nuances in the full article. Points 2 and 3 in particular make more sense in the article than in my summary list.
• • • • •
Katie Eyer also has a Bluesky thread on attending a conference as an introvert. Excerpt:
(I) lean into substance and find opportunities for one-on-one connection. I’ll take one-on-one connection first: I like people, I just don’t like groups. At some point it occurred to me that it is entirely possible to just set up one-on-one opportunities to connect.
• • • • •
Also from Animate Your Science, their guide to creating a colour scheme for your poster.
• • • • •
Leonardo Jo has a tip for GGplot users:
You can save a ggplot as a vectorized .svg file ggsave(“file.svg0).
It will be completely vectorized, even text are still recognized as text boxes. The svg file can be opened in PowerPoint, Illustrator, or Inkscape.
Ant Stanley thinks Bluesky could replace Twitter for conferences:
I think BlueSky will be significantly better for conferences than any other site. Organisers can create speaker starter packs to allow attendees to auto-follow all speakers. Also a custom feed of all folks skeeting abut a conference would be a big win.
• • • • •
The British Geriatric Society has an archive of over 1,100 posters that have been presented at British Geriatric Society events. Look, I’m just saying that if someone wanted to create a corpus to study poster design and trends, this might be a pretty good candidate.
• • • • •
And now to my social media feed and super quick links:
David “Why Sharks Matter” Shiffman asked for his Blueksy followers to give poster advice to his students. Bluesky responded (including me, because I’m on Bluesky). There are some good quips and bon mots in the replies.
He has another thread about conference advice more generally, also with good suggestions.
• • • • •
First aid for figures by Helena Jambor. Helena also has great cheat sheets for image preparation.
There’s more in the linked blog post.
• • • • •
I received this suggestion for an ad-free placeholder text generator. Hat tip to Rebecca MartĂnez.
• • • • •
From the weekly science glamour mag from the east side of the Atlantic (Nature – I’m talking about Nature), Scientific figures that pop: resources for the artistically challenged.
• • • • •
The American Society for Cell Biology has a nice post about Art in science: A gateway to public engagement. Excerpt:
The traditional communication of science—through academic papers, presentations, and technical language—can create a divide between researchers and the general public. Art, however, invites people into the conversation by focusing on visual and emotional experiences rather than jargon.
• • • • •
Paige Jarreau says, “Don’t AI my science art.” Excerpt:
We’ve only recently started acknowledging professional artists, storytellers, and other creatives as critical collaborators in the science communication enterprise… and boom, AI art generators threaten to cut them out of the process. Why?
• • • • •
The Bearwood Parish Council has taken a beloved (?) bit of local signage that read “CHEAP PAINT INSIDE” and immortalized it into a free font called, naturally, Cheap Paint Inside.
• • • • •
Possibly the least relevant link in this list but one of the most impressive. Nicholas Rougeux documents how he recreated astronomical illustrations from 1742. And it’s a book with lavish illustrations including seven fold out sections that are meant to create a single poster. Here’s a detail of one part of one fold out.
The graphics nerd part of me is in awe. Both of the original copper engraving and the reproduction. I want to keep showing examples of the level of detail in this work, but this post is long enough already, so I encourage you to visit the original post, Making of Clavis CĂŠlestis: A Synopsis of the Universe.
Oh, what the heck, here is the completed seven fold outs that made one poster:
The entire recreation of Clavis CĂŠlestis is online, and colour prints are available of the poster.
• • • • •
And finally, we always love a good reuse of a poster. At the one letter social media site (*cough*Nazibar*cough*), Armin Dorri shared how his supervisor turned one of his posters into a necktie.
Thank you for joining!
Today’s poster was generously shared by Bronson Mills! Click to enlarge!
I like the way the poster is sectioned using colour. And the choice
of colours works well: they harmonize well, are not too intense, and
don’t interfere with the reading of the text.
I would like to see more of the elements within each section aligned.
The middle “Climate change responses” section in particular would
benefit from the graphs lining up more precisely.
Similarly, in
the bottom left, “The combined effect of these processes is essential
for promoting Reef Resilience” is coming too close to the edge of its
section. "Reef Resilience" is not a proper noun, so should not be
capitalized.
Does not look good to be missing the subscript for “CaCO3” in a
heading, particularly when it’s correct (“CaCO3”) in the main text.
I count 502 words of text, which is juuuuuust about right for a conference poster. Those words are in Calibri, if I’m not mistaken. A typeface that is used less would give the poster more character.
Brook Flammang posted this picture from the Ocean Science meeting.
She writes:
Every conference should have a puppy play zone.
Seconded!
The title of this post is a direct swipe from the poster because Meg Mindlin’s title is reigns supreme and is undefeated. It’s just one of many things I love ❤️ about this poster. Click to enlarge!
I presented this poster at the very first CephNeuro conference at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA.When starting this poster I wanted to make something that was pretty to look at. I do not like traditional academic posters; they’re ugly and boring.My background before becoming a scientist was in art and design, and I do a lot of science communication on social media. Even though it was my first poster, I wanted to showcase my skills in those departments.I had originally hand drawn various different designs with an all black theme to add my own personal aesthetic to my work. I hated all of them and they just weren’t fun. I was taking myself too seriously.I decided I needed a fun title. Because zinc fingers were a main result of my research, I used an online pun generator to create “tickled zinc.”From then, I knew this poster had to be pink.I absolutely loved the idea of standing in a room surrounded by serious posters and having a bright pink one. I went to this conference looking for PhD positions so having a memorable poster was a plus. If a PI didn’t appreciate my humour and approach, then they weren’t a good fit for me anyways.I used Coolors to pick the specific pink colour scheme and then used Canva to create my poster. All the graphics I used are free. I just altered them to fit my color scheme, which is super easy to do in Canva.I didn’t want a wordy poster so I kept everything as minimal as possible, because I also wanted conversation. Keeping things minimal forced me to have to explain things.In terms of organization, I just looked at what I had and organized it how I felt it looked best, using lower opacity rectangles to separate sections. I tried to stick to two fonts only to keep things cohesive, though I ended up including more text so added a third that was more legible.The only part I’m unhappy with is the bottom right corner with affiliations. It feels messy and inconsistent.
The response was overwhelmingly positive.I presented a slide for their “flash talk” to showcase posters, which was also bright pink. The room definitely laughed when my slide was put up. I heard through the grapevine that people were asking others if they saw the pink poster. Everyone wanted to check out the pink poster, which allowed me to talk to more people than my research alone would likely bring! I had great conversations with people, and I accomplished my goal of being memorable!I worried that having so little on my poster I’d get a lot of questions that I wasn’t prepared for, but that wasn’t an issue. I got far less questions than I was expecting, which I hope is because I concisely represented my project.I will likely continue the pink theme going forward with this project. My thesis slides are also pink, and when we publish I will definitely push to keep the pun title and pink color scheme included, because why not? It makes science fun.
And I am even more incredulous that it’s been bought and even read by some people that I personally don’t know! It is still a thrill whenever I see someone hold up a copy in a Zoom call or say that they have a copy.
It is not to late for you to write a review on your favourite book site, ask your local university or college library to get a copy for their collection, or maybe even buy a copy yourself!
Thank you for your support!
As for me, today I have been celebrating by writing a full slate of blog posts for next week. Five new posts! Two new critiques, one short but oh so cute post, a massive link roundup, and a big post about how to crush a poster pitch session!
Another in our continuing series of, “Please don’t do this, conference organizers.”
Although this is a bit of an old picture I found while cleaning out my inbox, I wanted to bring this to the fore because I recently heard of other meetings that are trying some version of this.
It’s clearly an awful format. The point of an in person meeting is to facilitate conversations. This fails to do that. How are you supposed to find the person whose poster this is if you have questions?
“Demoralizing,” as one attendee called it.
Picture from the one letter social media site. Some discussion follows in a quote post and replies.
A question recently landed in my inbox about alignment. If some elements in a layout use shadows but others do not, should the shadows align with the edges?
Probably not.
This is a case where the psychology of visual perception is may be helpful. Human eyes are very good at detecting edges of things. Even implied edges. This is a phenomenon known as “illusory contours,” or occasionally “cognitive contours.”
Usually, a shadow implies the edge of an object, rather than being seen as the edge itself.
In the Better Posters book, Figure 19.3 and 19.4 on Page 212 make a similar point. The graphs in 19.3 at the top are technically aligned: they all take up the same space, same height, same, width. But the axes exert such a strong visual pull that it looks far better to ensure the axes line up.
Another example of this principle is hung punctuation: the practice of moving opening question marks outside of the boundary box created by text. The body of the text along the left forms a stronger edge than the small quotation mark, so the letters are aligned rather than the opening quotation mark.
Now, we could debate whether it is good practice to have some elements with shadows and others without, but that is another post for another day.
P.S.—Thanks to Samir for emailing a question! You too can email me at betterposters@gmail.com.
Samuel L. Jackson placeholder text generator
Carl Sagan placeholder text generator
Placeholder text generators (not all links current)
This post is not a criticism of the posters in the picture below.
To get the full effect of the size and placement of these posters, I think we need a human for scale.
I cannot believe in this day and age that anyone expects to have someone get down on their knees to read the bottom of a poster or to scan those little QR codes in the corner.
Organizers, please do not allow this to be the format your require for your posters.
From the social media site that used to be good then turned very bad.
I have been writing about the possible uses of QR codes for more than a decade now. But I have had one lingering question.
Does anyone actually use them?
This matters for conference poster design, because every bit of space
on a poster matters. If nobody is scanning QR codes on posters, they
should just be left off.
I looked through Google Scholar many times trying to find any research on how often QR codes get scanned. And I keep getting nothing. Obviously, companies that use QR codes can track how many people visit a website or download something that a QR code leads to, but those seem to be purely internal data that never get shared.
My completely subjective impression was that QR codes were not used by viewers. I rarely saw anyone with their phone out, scanning QR codes, when I walked through poster sessions.
If I had to guess how many poster session viewers scanned QR codes, I would have guessed it would be a percentage in single digits. Maybe 10% at best.
I was wrong.
Last week, I was at the ISMPP conference last week presenting a poster that tried to answer this question. Click to enlarge!
The top line result was shocking to me. About half of conference goers surveyed scanned QR codes! That was far more than I expected!
Now, this may be an unusual audience. Medical communication professionals may be more technically savvy than attendees at other conferences. Similar studies at other conference would be welcome!
Although engagement was higher than I expected, the reasons why people did not scan the codes were interesting. Many just didn’t notice them. So if you people to scan your QR code, maybe don’t make it the size of a postage stamp and stick in at the bottom of your poster.
Another reason that people didn’t scan QR codes may not be fixable, the dreaded “Not interested” response.
But when I presented this poster, I noticed that a poster nearby had a QR code with the description:
Scan to discover more.
As a viewer, I was wondering, “More what?”
What is the value add that I get from scanning this QR code? If you told me what is on the other end of that QR code, maybe I will be interested enough to fish out my phone and scan it.
And the moral of the story is: QR codes are not wasted space on a poster if you feature them in smart ways.
A note about the design of this poster. I did not design this poster; it was done by professionals who work with my colleagues at IPG Health. We tried to exemplify two of our own recommendations by making the QR code big and telling people exactly what they get from scanning.
Messina EL, Faulkes Z, Evans V, Wells JL, Morrison M, Parrish C, Hannan N. 2025. Half of Cochrane and ISMPP conference attendees scan poster QR codes: Can we harmonize discordant feedback to further enhance engagement? Poster presented at 21st Annual Meeting of International Society of Medical Publication Professionals (ISMPP), Washington, DC, USA, 12 May 2025. https://cdn.fs.pathlms.com/bSpeakR8RpO1BjN63xkx?cache=false&dl=true (PDF); https://mhmc.reveal-sp.com/poster/view/?id=UQj901Y1U (video walkthrough)
This conference was different than most others I had been to. I normally go to scientific conferences. This meeting is certainly adjacent to academics, but people at this meeting are not mainly professors and graduate students in universities. They are communication professionals in businesses.
The contributed poster session was relatively small: 72 posters in total. But this did mean that the organizers were able to do a few things with posters that I had not seen at larger conferences.
Here are a few things I noticed.
Many medical writing companies employ graphic designers. (I even met a graphic designer at a roundtable!) So it was not surprising that conference posters on display looked like that had been done by someone with more experience than a science grad student.
The choice of colours was more coherent. There were more graphic elements, particularly icons.
Despite what seemed to be the hand of graphic designers, many posters still needed editors. I still saw many posters that contained mostly columns of small text. (Don’t bother clicking to enlarge on the example below; it is blurry on purpose).
The example above show the big blocks of small text that are the enemy of conference poster design.
Speaking of bad habits shared by academics and medical writers...
Medical communications professionals are rightly interested in making sure that people of many different kinds of educations and backgrounds are able to understand medical research. There were many posters about PLSs and PLPSs.
That’s “plain language summaries” and “plain language publication summaries.”
A suggestion I have for anyone writing a plain language summary? Don’t call it a PLS or PLPS. Try not to use any new acronyms at all.
I liked that some posters got spotlighted. This conference had no contributed oral presentations, as far as I could see; only posters. The program committee reviewed the abstracts and picked a few that they thought were worth more attention.
The authors of two posters were given the chance to present their works after a keynote, in a big ballroom.
The authors of two more posters were featured in a “Guided poster tour.” When there were several parallel tracks of programming on the first afternoon, one option was to go to the room where the main poster session was held. The poster presenters had a microphone and small portable speaker, and were able to talk to whoever came in to hear them.
It was much like a regular poster presentation, except that there were no other presenters in the room competing for attention, and so the room was much quieter. The speakers were able to address a larger audience, and just had to do it once for everyone who came by. There was no expectation that they would go over the material for a few people individually.
Another clever way to promote people checking out posters was a “scavenger hunt” in the conference app. Clicking the link led to a survey with questions about posters. Some questions gave you a specific poster to check out, with a question about the content. Other questions gave you some data or information presented on a poster, and asked you to identify the poster number.
I did not like that posters were in at least three different locations. In a room with only posters, the vendor’s room, and scattered throughout the hallway.
I spent much time in the main poster session room where I was presenting, and almost overlooked some of the posters in the hallways.
Not related to posters, but a nice bit of design...
The front of the attendee badge is standard stuff. The back, however...
The back of the badge features a small program guide! I hadn’t seen this done before. Great way to use space that normally goes to waste.
The conference organizers did some quite innovative things with their contributed posters. Although this has the advantage of being a smaller meeting with a relatively small number of posters, I think several of these ideas could be used at meetings that are substantially bigger.
Today is Global Accessibility Awareness Day!
This poll from this weekËs ISMPP annual meeting shows how far we have to go in the field of conference posters:
My quick tip for better accessibility:
Fewer words, bigger.
How many people around you wear glasses or contacts? The world can be blurry for them! Bigger is easier to see!
Do not use generic section headings like “Introduction,” “Methods,” “Results,” and “Discussion.” Instead, use longer descriptive headings that give the main points of each section.
For example, instead of writing:
Reaching out to resources
They suggest a longer but more informative heading:
Women report reaching out to more resources than men
The team call these, “Complete assertion headings.” There are two examples in the paper I have reproduced here; click either to enlarge! Table II in the full paper also lists multiple examples.
The team tested this format against the billboard poster pioneered by Mike Morrison and the “Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion’ (IMRAD or, as Wolfe and company call it, IMRD) formats.
They did two tests. Both of them used posters about the same content formatted in three different ways. Viewers of posters were scored on their comprehension of the poster and their preferences.
The first was with undergraduates. The authors wrote that students are not exactly the target audience for posters, who tend to be a bit further along in their studies. So they conducted a second study, using “engineering professionals,” which was a mix of graduate students and faculty.
The logic of the second study was generally the same, except that instead of testing for comprehension directly, they asked how participants how easy it was to understand. This is an important difference, because people’s preferences about content they are trying to learn do not always align with their actual learning (Delauriers et al. 2019).
In both studies, the “Complete assertion headings” generally comes out on top, the billboard format in the middle, and the “journal article on the wall” fares poorest.
Both studies had relatively small samples, between 20 and 25 subjects. I would love to see studies on poster usability that are ten times bigger.
What strikes me is that this format – using headings to guide a reader quickly through a poster – shares much in common with the billboard format and with what I’ve called “the Columbo rule.”
All three of them emphasize making simple and clear declarative statements. They just differ in where those statements are placed.
I think many scientists shy away from making those strong declarative statements. Flat out saying “This is the finding” might feel push and blunt because it runs counter to academic culture. Scientists are taught to be conservative in their interpretation of data. To allow others to inspect data so that they can reach their own conclusions. Not to hype their research.
These are generally positive things for researchers to do! These are good practices for full presentations of research projects in journals. But in the context of a busy conference, trying to say as little as possible about the data and the interpretation of them makes for much less effective communication.
While I didn’t use the term, I basically used the “Complete assertion heading” format in one of my own posters.
First, I ditched the standard “IMRAD” headings. My idea was to try to make the poster quickly readable by making every heading a key question or finding. That way, you only had to read a few sentences to get the gist of the poster.
Ahead of my time!
Deslauriers L, McCarty LS, Miller K, Callaghan K, Kestin G. 2019. Measuring actual learning versus feeling of learning in response to being actively engaged in the classroom. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: 201821936. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1821936116
Wolfe J, Reineke J, Lott J. 2025. Comparative study of scientific research poster design favors complete assertion headings and no abstracts over other formats. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication: In press. https://doi.org/10.1109/TPC.2025.3529094
Detective stories: “Whodunnit?” versus “How’s he gonna prove it?”
A poster with no conference, or: What I made in that #SciFund poster class
I’ll be giving an online presentation tomorrow, March 28 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time or 11:00 a.m. Arizona time.
There is still time to register! Visit https://waterwhys.org/seminar/spring-2025/ to sign up!
Out now from Pelagic Publishing and fine bookstores.
Pelagic Publishing page for Better Posters
Bookshop.org page for Better Posters (hub for local retailers)
Amazon page for Better Posters
Chapters page for Better Posters
Posts
All Comments
