Presenting Your Research: Research Posters

Developing and presenting a poster is a common way to share research ideas and work at conferences and other professional events.

This page of the guide provides some of the steps for getting started.

What's the Purpose? Determine the purpose of your presentation. What are the most important points of your research that you want to share and to what end? If there's an idea that you want your audience to remember, what is it?

Who is your audience? Will they understand technical terms that you use? If you want to also attract audiences who are not in your discipline, consider using language and images that appeal to both discipline and non-discipline viewers.

What are the rules for your poster? Event organizers usually limited space in which to fit all of the posters, so the physical size of your poster might be limited to a specific height and width. Some conferences even require specific font sizes and styles. Check with organizers for poster session rules.

Printing student posters

Printing of student posters is handled by Media Services. Learn more about poster printing at SU.

Downloadable SU Poster Templates

These template sizes are optimized to work with campus plotter printers:

• 30 x 36 PowerPoint template (PPT download)

• 36 x 48 PowerPoint template (PPT download)

Now that you know the dimensions that you have to work with, think about organizing your poster in sections. Common sections for academic posters include:

Header: Title, Name and Institution

1. Introduction
2. Hypothesis or statement of need
3. Method 
4. Discussion of results, measured or observed.
5. Conclusion or new question
6. Future plans or direction.

This image represents the common "flow" of how audiences read research posters. This is just an example.

Image source: Northwestern University Collaborative Learning & Integrated Mentoring in the Biosciences

"When deciding how to design your poster, you will want to think carefully about the most effective way to visually present your research to your expected audience.

• What is the “take-home message” of your work?
• How will you draw people in?

Many academic conferences include poster sessions as a part of conference programming, but they may also be displayed in stand-alone events such as poster fairs. In a typical poster session, presenters stand near their posters prepared to speak with interested attendees about their work. Many times when submitting for a poster presentation, you need only submit an abstract." (Academic Poster Resources: The Basics, Yale U.)

Effective Poster Design - The University of Guelph Teaching Support Services makes recommendations for poster backgrounds, colors, spacing, and text/font.

Visuals: Consult SU Libraries' Copyright guide section on Finding and Using Images to learn more. Images and videos can enhance your ability to communicate ideas to an audience. However, it is important to know that there are restrictions (copyright, for example).

Students who are preparing posters can use the resources provided to prepare their posters. Printing of student posters is handled by Media Services. Learn more about poster printing at SU.

Faculty who are presenting a poster for a conference or for academic purposes can contact the Instructional Design & Delivery department.