Remix · Research Poster

Research Poster

Concisely tell the story of your research with visual language.

In many academic fields posters are a popular way to present research findings. Researchers summarize their work concisely and attractively as a way to publicize their findings and generate discussion. Poster content can include text, tables, graphs, illustrations, and photos. Many professional conferences include sessions where participants can view several posters and interact with researchers. In this project you will gather and format your research into a standard research poster format, sharing your poster online.

Powerpoint Excel

Research
Data
Poster

Learning Goals

After you finish this activity you will be able to:

Explain a single research project to an audience of professionals
Simplify findings through the use of charts, tables, and other data visualization techniques
Appropriately balance the use of image and text

Project Prerequisite
This project assumes you have already completed an academic research paper.

Assignment Rubric

Instructions

Follow these steps to complete the project.

To track your progress, click each step as you finish.

Get inspired

An excellent first step in creating any media work is to examine exemplary works of the same type. Make a list for yourself of what makes these examples strong and inspiring.

Don't skip this step!

1	Peruse any or all of the links in the Get Inspired box.

Tame your tools

By growing your skills in the tools used in any project, you save yourself time and produce stronger work.

2	Watch this tutorial on Making a Better Research Poster.
3	Peruse any or all of the other tutorials in the Tame Your Tools box.

Create a folder to store project resources

When beginning a new media project, it's best to organize your resources in a single location.

4	Create a folder on your Desktop named something memorable, such as my-media-project. In this folder you'll organize all your resources for this project.

Alternate File Storage
You may also organize your documents in cloud storage, such as Box or Google Drive.

Prepare your research for poster format

Research posters translate long and complex research into a single 48" x 36" poster which is highly visual—characterized by images, charts and graphs, bullet points, and no more than ~1000 words.

×Rule of thumb
As a rule of thumb ... the less words, the better. Be concise! You will need to be very selective in what you include from your paper on your poster.

5	First, visualize the layout of your poster as a collection of zones with word count limits. Many layouts are possible and word counts are approximations, but this format is fairly ubiquitous.

6	Next, with your research paper/project in hand, open the Research Poster Planning Inventory, copy it to your own Google drive and fill it out.
7	Make sure to save the Planning Inventory to your project folder when finished.

Download our research poster template

In the next steps, you'll use the writing you did in the Poster Planning Inventory to structure your poster using Microsoft Powerpoint.

8	First, download our Research Poster Template. You'll place your text, figures and images into the template to produce the poster. While the template is rudimentary, there are many ways to highlight certain features:

9	Make sure to save the presentation template you downloaded (example-presentation-light.pptx) to your project folder.

Add your text to the research poster template

Now, you'll modify the template with text from your Research Planning Inventory. Before we begin to modify your poster, you may wish to review Colin Purrington's research poster best practices, if you hadn't alredy.

10	Next, replace the "Lorem Ipsum" (faux Latin placeholder text) with your own text, in the following sections: Introduction Methods Results Conclusion Acknowledgments

Don't bother adjusting box and text size just yet. You'll add any images and charts in the next steps and make final adjustments to all the element once all content has been added.

Add your images to the resarch poster

Images are a powerful draw for your audience, as long as they don't overpower the poster. In this step you'll add any images you require.

11	Select the Insert tab. Then select Pictures > Picture from File... to browse to your image.

12	Click the Insert button to insert the image into the poster.
13	Click into the center of the inserted image to expose the sizing handles. Click a corner of your image and drag to resize it. The circular icon atop the image will rotate it.

14	Next, under the Insert tab, select the Text Box icon from the menu.
15	Click and drag out a rectangular text box next to the inserted image. Make sure to: Add the number and description of your figure and set the font weight to Bold Set the font face of the text to a sans-serif such as Arial Set the font-size to match the body text

16	Repeat steps 11-15 to add any additional images you require to the poster.

Add live data to your poster

Powerpoint allows you to embed a chart or graph which is linked to an Excel spreadsheet. This way, you may easily update the chart in your poster by updating the data in your spreadsheet.

17	Under the Insert tab click the Chart dropdown. Select the chart type flyout to select the specific chart you wish. Click its icon to insert it.

18	Excel will now automatically open the associated spreadsheet for you to adjust the data and category names. Make sure to save this spreadsheet to your project folder.

19	Back in Powerpoint, select the inserted chart and resize it to fit your needs. Finally, double-click the Chart Title to edit it.

Pro Tip
Make sure to hold down the Shift key while dragging the chart to maintain image proportions.

Proof and print your poster

Depending on the size, printing a research poster can cost upwards of $40 dollars. For this reason, it's important to proof your poster carefully before submitting it for print.

Proof your poster: