Better posters mean better research.

Engaging and easy to read... Every lab should have a copy of Better Posters. The book should make conference poster sessions better for everyone – those presenting and those attending. Thank goodness someone wrote it! --Stephen Heard, Scientist Sees Squirrel

'This book should be in the library of any university with a graduate program or on the shelf of any researcher who makes research posters/oversees students who make research posters.' --Kristin Briney, Data Ab Initio

Distilling over a decade of experience from the popular Better Posters blog, Zen Faulkes will help you create a clear and informative conference poster that delivers maximum impact.

Academics have used posters to share research for more than five decades, and tens of thousands of posters are presented at conferences every year. Despite the popularity of the format, no in-depth guide has been available on how to create and deliver compelling conference posters. From over-long titles, tiny text and swarms of logos, to bad font choices, chaotic colour schemes and blurry images – it's easy to leave viewers confused about your poster's message.

The solution is Better Posters: a comprehensive guide to everything you need to know – from writing a title and submitting an abstract, to designing the poster and finally presenting it in the poster session. Your conference poster will be one of your first research outputs, and the poster session is your first introduction to a professional community. Making a great poster develops the skills to create publications, reports, outreach and teaching materials throughout your career.

This book also has material for conference organizers on how to make a better poster session for their attendees.

Zen Faulkes is a professor of biology. He has written the popular Better Posters blog for over eleven years.

Foreword by Echo Rivera
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction

1 Poster design: the short form

Part I - For viewers
2 Attending a poster session

Part II - For presenters
3 Why posters?
4 Design thinking
5 Early preparation
6 Narrative thinking
7 Visual thinking and graphic design
8 Figures
9 Presenting data
10 Colors
11 Beyond paper
12 Text and type
13 Layout
14 Grids
15 Background
16 Title bars
17 Blocks of text
18 Sections
19 Images and graphics, revisited
20 Fine-tuning
21 Before you print
22 Printing
23 Travel
24 Networking and presentation
25 After the conference

Part III - For organizers
26 Poster session planning
27 Conference website resources
28 During the conference

Part IV - What next?
29 Constant improvement

Afterword
References
Index