The Phenotype Of Online Scientific Data

Part I of a four part series discussing scientific poster presentations.

Why are so many poster presentations so bad?

Presenting a poster is too often seen as an easy way out, a quick no-consequence way of attending a meeting. But posters often have greater impact than many talks. Sure, your audience is smaller than giving a talk. But at a poster, the people most interested in your work are coming to you to hear about your work. They’re not captive audience members catching up on sleep, doodling in their abstract book, answering emails, or being outbid on Ebay. They’ve made a deliberate effort to come see YOU.

Last week, Erica Westly at The Scientist wrote about Colin Purrington’s efforts to beautify our poster presentations. Colin attributes the decline in poster quality to the use of Powerpoint, the appearance of the poster printer, and the structure of most poster sessions as glorified wine and cheese parties.

I’ll touch on each of these, but I’d also like to make three suggestions for designing a potent poster: Process, Format, Presentation.

It is misguided to blame Powerpoint for the rise in poor poster presentations. Don’t blame the tool, blame the misuse of the tool.

Granted, some might say that Powerpoint was designed to provide visuals for spoken presentations. I’ve seen stunning posters prepared in Powerpoint. And I’ve seen horrific posters prepared in page layout programs such as Adobe’s InDesign. It’s about the process of design not the program.

Why do we loathe Powerpoint presentations? Is there something inherently bad with Powerpoint? No. Is there something inherently bad with letting Powerpoint steer your design and content? Yes.

Again. Designing a good poster comes down to process, not which tool you use to realize your vision.

Don’t design your poster in front of the computer. Use the same process you would use for preparing a talk. Sit down with some paper. Outline the content and the flow. Once you have your ideas on paper it will make it much easier to translate into a visually effective poster.

I agree with Colin: the rise of the poster printer has sounded a resounding death knoll across the land for good poster design.

First, some history.

When I was in graduate school, we prepared our posters on 8.5″ x 11″ sheets of paper, mostly on the computer in things like Word or Canvas. Some images were even hand-drawn!

The week before the meeting, we would all march up to the bookstore to pick out matte board for mounting the sheets. In the way-way-back time, we’d even cut the matte ourselves, until the University Bookstore started providing this as a service.

Much pasting and cursing followed, particularly when creating the hinged pieces for the poster title. But in the end, we had a set of poster panels, perfectly compact for traveling. Content and form, together in bliss.

Witness the rise of the giant poster printout. At first it was just the medical schools that had access to the printers. We looked on with shameless envy. Those graduate students didn’t have to spend a week working on their cut-and-paste project. They just slapped some crap into a Canvas template and had somebody print their poster. As we fumbled around pinning up our panels at the meeting, they suavely took out four tacks. One. Two. Three. Four. Done. Where’s the wine? Clearly, we needed to make Big Posters, too.

The fall of Eden. When once we traveled freely with lightweight panels packed in our carry on luggage, now we had joined the Poster Tube Brigade. Our printing costs soared. Our posters, heavily templatized, went downhill.

Can you tell that I’m not a huge fan of the monolithic printed poster?

For your next poster, consider returning to the old school way. Print panels on individual sheets. Make each panel concise conveying a single point. Just because the panels are small doesn’t mean you can’t follow good design principles (which we’ll cover here in a future post). You might just find that the combination of deliberate Process and compact Format make preparing and presenting your poster much more fun, too.

Finally, let’s talk a bit about Presentation.

Does this sound familiar?

1. Slap some information on a poster the day before a meeting.
2. Rush it to the media arts department (or Kinko’s!) for printing at double the normal price.
3. Put your poster up 5 minutes into your scheduled session.
4. Grab some wine to whet your whistle.
5. Quietly stand by as people read your poster, occasionally asking if they want explanation.
6. Throw your poster in your lab’s poster graveyard, never to be seen or heard from again.

Look.

This is exactly the wrong strategy to take when presenting a poster.

You are presenting your work, your ideas, yourself. Put your best foot forward. If someone comes by your poster, introduce yourself. Get your visitor’s name and find out where they’re from. If you have multiple people gathered around, you can save some wear and tear on your vocal chords by addressing the group.

Make everyone feel welcome, not just those folks that you already know. You are (hopefully) enthusiastic about your work; share that enthusiasm. It will make your presentation stand out amongst the throngs.

Do you have suggestions for how to prepare and present a successful poster? Please share!

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