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Poster Presentation Toolkit: Home

Poster sessions at conferences and professional meetings are a way to visually convey the details of your research or conclusions. This guide will offer you the basics in design, content, and resources.

Software

PowerPoint

A popular, easy-to-use option. It is part of your Microsoft Office Felician account package and is available on all library computers and through your Office 365 account. (Advice for creating a poster with PowerPoint).

Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign

Feature-rich professional software that is good for posters including lots of high-resolution images, but they are more complex and expensive.  

Open Source Alternatives 

Are you preparing for an upcoming conference? Need to design a poster for your class? This guide will give you tools for communicating your research for academic conferences and professional meetings in a concise and visually effective poster presentation. 

What?

Posters are ways of communicating your work visually and concisely to interested viewers.  As viewers walk through the poster display area, they may skim your poster, stop to read, or ask questions.   A poster session is a good opportunity, not only to explain and promote your research or project, but to get feedback on it, make connections with researchers working in related areas, and possibly even meet a future employer.

Often held in conjunction with scientific conferences, poster sessions are an important part of the scientific communication process. They allow you to reach a large audience more informally than a prepared research talk and to interact directly with interested viewers.

Why?

Posters, in general, are an effective means of communicating complex information in a simplified and approachable format.

Effective posters will have not much time to convey its message.  Therefore the message being delivered has to be done clearly, easily and without much preamble or other context given.

An essential element to creating an effective poster is paying mind to the aesthetics of it – it must be visually pleasing.  You have to visually pull in your audience member to talk to them.

Illustration of a woman in a wheelchair presenting a poster on primate behaviour.

A strong scientific poster can help showcase your research in several ways. (Illustration: Jon Wagner, Presenting Science Concisely)

You might be preparing for a poster session for a number of reasons:

  • a class assignment
  • an undergraduate or graduate research display
  • a promotional event highlighting work done at the University
  • a scientific conference or professional meeting

Regardless of the purpose, the same basic principles of poster design and presentation apply. Some details may vary depending on the requirements of the session organizer and whether you are presenting for a class assignment or for a conference.

Printing Your Poster

Local Poster Printing

Rutherford Public Library

  • Printing is conducted by Library staff and may be arranged by emailing ruthcirc@bccls.org or calling 201-939-8600.
  • Minimum 2 business days. 

Staples East Rutherford, NJ

  • (201) 531-9777

Need more help?

Students: Check the events calendar for upcoming Poster Presentation workshops, email a librarian for an appointment, or ask your professor to schedule a class session. 

Faculty: Contact your liaison librarian for a consultation or to request a Poster Presentation & Design session for your class. 

Nursing Capstone Poster

Background image of stethscope, mask and heart with title NURS 460 Senior Immersion Capstone Paper Library Guide

NURS460 - Senior Immersion Capstone & Poster Guide 

This guide is here to help you with your senior capstone paper and to be a 24/7 resource that you can use throughout the NURS-460 course.

This guide is here to help you with the paper and poster format, as well as research tips. Any questions regarding your topic should be addressed with your NURS-460 & Nurse Education Manager.