Information for your Poster

As for the poster, it can follow your presentation. Some thoughts:

• Be sure your name is on your poster (my pet peeve) and you have a clear title.
• Your poster should have a clear purpose, a purpose that a reader can immediately grasp.
• Make sure someone knows what you've done without verbal explanation, that the poster information is effectively conveyed and specific points are well explained.
• Organize the flow and graphics so that they are visible to someone standing a few feet away from you. (Make sure the font pointsize is big enough.)
• It's hard to see white paper on a white board but a simple solution is to put colored paper behind the white (with some showing) to offset the white. It looks nice, makes for a classier poster. If you need some, I have some in my office.
• Different ways to organize the content include temporal, topical, problem/solution, or cause-->effect or effect-->cause.
• Remember that we read left-->right and top-->bottom. The flow becomes more natural, clearer when you've incorporated this orientation.
• Some company materials work.

Suggestions for poster design are given in Research Posters 101 at www.acm.org/crossroads/xrds3-2/posters.html.
(Although these suggestions were published for student researchers, many of the ideas are also applicable to your internship posters.)

Courtesy of the NASA Space Grant Consortium, are two worksheets:

• Quick Poster Checklist
• The Basics of Poster Design