I got an email today advertising a poster competition in my university (across departments), with a competition for research students. The top prize is £500 with two runner-up positions, I could do with a bit of cash, as well as the obvious recognition etc., so I'd really like to enter and hopefully impress people!

I've never done an academic poster so I'm just looking for some advice really. I haven't started the actual empirical work yet (starting in the summer hopefully) so it won't include anything like that, I'm thinking along the lines of an overview of my literature review and methodology.

Thanks in advance!

======= Date Modified 13 Mar 2012 09:33:58 =======
============= Edited by a Moderator =============
Removed my mods - SPAM

======= Date Modified 13 Mar 2012 09:23:00 =======
Hi Natassia
I think what you are suggesting as a topic for your poster sounds fine. It would be worth looking at whether your uni runs training sessions in producing posters, which I've found very useful in the past. The main points of the training I've had were:

to emphasise images and graphical presentation over dense blocks of text or detailed figures (guidelines suggested were 40% graphics, 20% text, 40% empty space),
consider the audience and the level of knowledge they'll have to start with,
look at other posters (around the dept?) to see what works,
make sure the poster is readable from 1m. away with ref to font size and contrast,
and, from my own bitter experience make sure you proof read and proof read again.

Good luck with it. Having never won any poster competition, I've entered I console myself with the thought that its all good experience and exposure.

I'm not an expert on these things, but some of my general advice would be:

- Make good use of images, no one wants a wall of text
- Try to keep your writing style brief, again no wall of text
- The final "wall of text" advice - make sure your font is easily readable, a good size and nothing wacky
- Avoid gimmicky things like funny fonts, word art (as if anyone uses this anyway!), puns or anything silly to attention grab.
- Do attract attention with a good title and a high quality diagram/picture.
- If your poster is a bit of a story then let it lead the reader along, make each part flow from the first to the second etc.
- Don't use too many or too few colours. Have a theme palette that will allow you a few complementary colours.
- Make sure any images you use are high resolution so that they print out correctly
- If you are early on then include a "what I'm going to do next" (under a better title!) section. This allows you to talk about the more interesting things you expect to find later before you've actually done them.

Hope that helps

Yup, I would agree with Screamingaddabs and Clupea (so much easier to spell:p) but would also add a word of caution about putting your literature review, or even some of it, or even a bit of it on a poster. Let's face it, lit reviews are not that riveting, or maybe that's just me! You could pick a couple of authors and suggest that they have inspired you to go in 'x' direction. Methodology and results make for more interesting posters imo. Maybe you don't have results yet but from memory isn't your reserach topic quite innovative in itself? I would stress that angle. I could be way off the mark but I couldn't see somebody winning a poster competition with a lit review.

I'd agree with all of the advice given so far. I've entered a few poster competitions (and won one) - strong images, good balance of colours, clear fonts and readable text, not too much text, all these things are important. And I'd agree that you don't want to focus too much on literature - if you can put across what's exciting and unique about your topic or the approach you're planning to take, that would be much more likely to get attention.

Ultimately, though, poster competitions are fairly arbitrary - in all the competitions I've entered or seen, there might be one stand-out poster that wins because it's just very very good (balance of text and images, presents interesting results, has great images illustrating topic and results), but there are also usually one or two posters that win where most people react with, "Really?! Why that one?" It's down to the particular interests of the judges, and that's impossible to second guess.

I suppose what I'm saying is, poster competitions are great - I actually find it useful to think about how to present my topic, it clarifies what the key points are - but don't count on winning one just by putting in lots of effort! Good luck with it anyway, though!

Thank you for the helpful replies and sorry it's taken me so long to respond. I'm going to tell my supervisors that I'm interested in entering when I have a supervision on Tuesday, hopefully they'll be supportive and have some suggestions as well.

Ady - yes my research topic is quite innovative as in it is in a very new area using an equally novel (and problematic) methodology. So it may be better to focus on my methodology then, to be honest I'd never thought of that. I was thinking of trying to tell some sort of story; this would fit as my methodology involves analysis of narratives. I am also an insider researcher so I was going to bring that into it as well, making it slightly more personal and subjective.

The difficulty is that it is a competition that runs across the university, so my poster will be up against those from all the other departments. I imagine this would make judging them quite difficult, I haven't seen the judging criteria yet. I also have a very talented graphic designer friend who I am going to try to get on board!

======= Date Modified 19 Mar 2012 10:02:51 =======
Good luck for this. I think that you should definitely enter, apart from just the potential of winning I find poster sessions a good way to talk to people and get opinions (do go ahead and talk to people who stop at your poster, and ask if they would like you to describe what is on the poster-I find that these discussions have helped me focus on my research and understand what questions people are asking about my research, which in oral presentations often cannot happen because a person has one question). This blog:

http://betterposters.blogspot.com/ -

has a couple of good tips. I enjoy it when they criticise and improve an actual poster as you can see what the changes mean.

PS...definitely get your graphic designer friend involved...and ask their opinions, but keep in mind that this is a scientific poster competition not a graphic design competition. Sometimes I have seen posters where the emphasis is all on the graphic design and what looks good, and this might not make the science easy to understand.

But (up).