Best titles are short conclusions, not long introductions. Martin Krzywinski Get the logo in EPS format—do not use low-resolution bitmaps or change the aspect ratio of the logo. Size the logos to give them the same visual weight. Your work is probably a “study” and explores a “relationship” to look for an “effect”. Treat that as a given and say what is important. Don’t try to be snarky, cheeky or witty—most attempts at this do not succeed. Do not trigger the jokers, cynics, cranks and curmudgeons. mkweb.bcgsc.ca Avoid unnecessarily long institution address. No postal codes, no zip codes! If presenting to a local audience, you don’t need the city. Unless you’re presenting internationally, you don’t need the country. POSTER CHILD OF SCIENCE A poster will likely be your first opportunity to organize and communicate your reasearch to members outside of your lab. Posters help you to practise telling and “drawing” your research story. This story shouild be the key design element. Most posters are bad not because they are ugly (they are) but because they fail to present what was done and why it was done concisely. Most posters have too much on them. Less is more: get to the point, then stop. The reader will look at the title and scan your poster for themes, largely cueing on color. EGFR GAP RAS RAF PKC Use color early and consistently to establish these themes. Minimize the use of color elsewhere. Extend beyond the frame to imply a crop or continuity. Some graphics do not need a legend. Embed simple diagrams next to text or break out the legend into parts and set it within the graphic. Good explanations are ones conveniently placed. The smallest text on the poster should be what is tangential or delivers detail beyond the first explanation. Only warily color text. Maintain good Gestalt: things that appear will forms groups. Group with purpose. ALL SCIENCE DESERVES EXCELLENT EXPLANATIONS Explain your science quickly and clearly and motivate why it needed to be done. The poster is your prop. In most settings, you will be there to present it. Match its content to the story you will tell. ONLY YOU CAN STOP POSTER DUMPSTER FIRES Clip art, pie charts, bullet points (typographical rodent poop), boxes around text, background fills and gradients. Only you can stop it. 1 Use figure titles to explain trends, not merely to specify the axes. y A Use a multiply blend mode to layer dense data. Hollow points make excellent outliers. 4 y r 2 = 0.96 4 B 3 C 2 Regions of unbalanced negative space are good candidates for annotations, credits, quotes, and other garnish that adds value to the poster. Don’t go crazy here—most posters don’t need quotes and the quotes that are typically selected rehash old tropes. If you must, find something that is passionate and slightly mysterious. Find something here: http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/quotes 2 Share axes, where possible, or align panels to emphasize variables or scale. Where possible, attach labels to data and avoid legends. Establish continuity using figures that share an axis. Thresholds that span across figure panels (dashed lines, not dotted) couple elements and lead the eye. Use grids sparingly. Do not divide the plot more finely than precision allows. 3 2 1 region of interest 0 x/y don’t need to join Embed text within the panel to call out important observations. Cue data and areas with arrows or outlines. 0 1 2 3 4 x Don’t tell the reader what is obvious: “a linear fit to a scatter plot” is redundant. Interpret the figure, don’t tell me what I’m seeing. Italicize variables in fit diagnostics and use shaded bands for confidence intervals. Highlight regions of interests with a solid color (or grey), not outlines. 1 0 If you are acknowledging support from an institution whose logo you are using, consider placing it next to the logo. But not too close—check whether branding guidelines specify a margin. A B C D Orange threshold powerfully establishes a theme across all figures. Look for opportunities like this and base your layout on them. Categorical variables in bar charts do not need an explicit axis. Specify sample sizes and what error bars represent (e.g. standard error of mean, n = 5). Report P-values with effect sizes or confidence intervals. A statistically significant observation isn’t necessarily of biological interest. 3 Avoid color and arrows where the meaning is obvious. CHOOSE WISELY EGFR Use Brewer palettes for colors and be mindful of colorblind readers. EGFR GAP RAS GAP EGF RAF EGF RAF PKC Make space for inline explanations. CREB Align aggressively and never underestimate the power of a spot of color. RAS PKC Axis breaks tell a story. CKII CKII CREB Look for opportunities to include key observations and explanations in the figure—don’t leave it to the main text, where it may be far from the graphic. Anticipate the reader’s questions and answer them. Dense is not necessarily crowded. Establish a layout and separate elements with space. Avoid excessive use of lines as dividers. One or two can be effective, more than that can make the poster look like a jail. CUE THEMES WITH COLOR Color powerfully classifies content. It is impossible to achieve this if everything is in color or if the poster is agrresively colourfully branded. A ramp of colors of the same hue (e.g. green, blue) is useful to communicate continuous quantity. Use a single salient color (e.g. orange, magenta) to underscore a key theme, observation or conclusion. Use grey for baseline, control or reference conditions. Dark grey is easier on the eyes than black. Choose colors that intuitively map to favourable (e.g. blue, green) or unfavourable outcomes (magenta, orange). Always map salience to pertinence. Orange (or magenta) says “look here”, so it better be important. Empty space tells the reader that you didn’t say everything you know because you value their time. EVERYTHING IS IMPORTANT, BUT SOME THINGS ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN OTHERS. Establish a visual hierarchy by giving emphasis to your hypothesis, conclusion and the key points that connect them. Protocols, technical methods, and other minutiae can be safely relegated to the bottom of the poster. Always be mindful of what the reader needs to know to understand enough to ask insightful questions. FORCE LINE BREAKS that split a sentence into noun phrases or offer a natural pause, such as at a comma or a period. Balance layout and content by shorten sentences where possible to improve layout or change the width of the text box. MAINTAIN AND CONTROL PROPORTIONS. This poster is 16” × 12” 0 1 2 (1152 × 864 pt), uses cm Helvetica Neue with a 5, 0 8, 13, 21, 34, 55 pt scale 1/4 1/2 1/4 ladder and is legible on inch most screens. Sans-serif is clearer than serif at small sizes and suitable for modest amounts of copy. Keep line length short and hyphenate instead of fully justifying. 0 points 12 24 36 4 1 5 1/4 1/2 72 A point is a unit of size used in typography. Units like this only make sense for posters that are printed—without a physical size they lose their meaning, but can provide a helpful scale. AVOID OBVIOUS TITLES such as “references”. Citations can be set in a block of text, with bold numbers 1. like this and 2. like this to help the reader find them. Unless a specific citation style is required, use as compact a style as possible that also includes the title of the reference. mkweb.bcgsc.ca / v1.1 6 Jul 2020
