INDEX OF ARTICLES WRITTEN BY PHIL DEE
Phil Dee, is desperately seeking a Ph.D. somewhere in
the South West of England. But he knows that it's about more than
research. His dispatches from the lab trace his quest to develop
the skills that will take him beyond his doctorate and into the
world of work.
When telling nonscientist friends how much you enjoyed
making your new poster, expect them to look rather puzzled. After
suffering some very subdued reactions, I now believe that most
people think a poster is only a worthy undertaking for a primary
school project on 'Life in Our Pond'. The truth is that posters
form an intrinsic part of scientific life. They're an advert for
your research and a seriously effective way to get yourself
noticed. And that is important in any field. Complete strangers may
end up being your collaborators, best critics, generators of
Ph.D.-saving ideas, or even your future employer.
Start with a short and informative title. It may be hard for
people unfamiliar with your field to tell if they should bother to
read your poster, so your title should arouse as much general
interest as possible. Try not to use the long-winded title of your
project!
Back up your title with an eye-catching poster summary. Direct
the minds of your readers to your message with short, punchy bullet
points. Don't simply reproduce your abstract. At most conferences,
delegates will already have a book of abstracts, so why waste
precious poster space including it again? Distilling your abstract
down to a single message will also help you get the knack for
recognising what your message is. This skill is absolutely
fundamental to selling yourself. As far as the rest of the content
goes, as long as you explain your key results really well and say
what you are planning to do next, the rest is up to you. Don't be
afraid to be selective--you don't have to include everything.
So, what overshadows good content and makes a poster 'look' bad?
The next time you are at a conference try 'cruising the boards' to
spot some poster howlers. The most common and painful error is the
inclusion of paragraph after paragraph of mind-numbing text. Let's
be frank, if they'rethatinterested they'll ask for your
detailed Materials and Methods. You may be convinced that key
workers in your field will want all this detail. But are you sure
even they will be bothered to read it all? The brain tends to
dismiss blocks of indigestible text, so dream up new ways to say it
with a picture or diagram. Where you can't avoid using words, cut
to the chase and use short bullet points. These are all good skills
to acquire in today's fast-paced world. Learn to be inventive and
be very critical of what you create. Just remember how billboard
advertising gets its message across using minimal words and strong
images--it's a multimillion-pound business for a reason. If your
poster is merely a scientific paper stuck up on a board, it'll have
little impact.
Once you have your content in place, it is important to create a
visually appealing poster. Now is the time to check the dimensions
of the poster boards. Make sure your poster won't encroach onto
your neighbour's board or leave its bottom hanging in mid-air. If
you can, do your poster layout with a good presentations software
package, like Microsoft PowerPoint. Each section of your poster
should have a separate panel. But don't cram the panels full of
facts. Leave big margins, say, 15mm around your boxes and 40mm
around the perimeter of your poster. As advertising executives say,
'white space sells'. And try to avoid gaudy colours and funny
fonts. They can be fun to use, but they may be off-putting to more
sober members of your community.
Arrange the boxes so they tell a logical story. You can even
number boxes if they make more sense in a particular sequence. The
'look' of your poster will also improve if the individual boxes are
lined up correctly; bad alignment at the margins just looks
'wrong'. Developing an eye for these details will impress everyone
who sees your poster, including potential employers.
[Click here for a visual guide to
good and
bad poster designs].
Once you have the whole package assembled, print out a draft
copy. Your computer-generated poster will look very different on
the wall. What seems like a reasonably large font size on your
computer screen may appear tiny on an A0 poster, particularly when
it is viewed from a distance of 1 metre. Then get as many people as
you can to give you their first impressions.
Consider sending the finished product off to be printed and
laminated. Your nearest print shop should be able to help you with
this. Although critics rightly point out that single-sheet posters
can't be updated with new results, a laminated poster is almost
always more impressive than separate panels. If it's an important
conference, take the plunge. It's worth the extra money to give
your poster that professional look. At your next conference see how
many of the 'top' posters are now prepared in this way.
Finally, get your poster up early. It's your advertisement, so
sell yourself! After all your hard work getting your poster just
right, the scientists who spot it on the Tuesday lunchtime should
be so impressed that they remember to search you out for a chat at
the poster session on Thursday evening. By then, you should be
camped out by your work of art 'touting for business'.