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All right every one, before we get started designing ur own poster with InDesign
I want to show you some posters I made over the years
in my studies as a biologist. Here we go with the posters.
The poster you see here is the very first poster I made
and this is really just this typical wall of text that you see so often.
Every one just tries to get as much information on the poster as they can
but on a conference no one will stand in front on a poster and read it for 10 minutes.
Also you see here that the edge to the border of the paper is not very big.
So, actually when I printed this thing and put it into the frame on the wall of our department
it was cutting some text on the edges,
because the frame was overlapping.
So make sure you have also some distance from your text and the border.
Also make sure that the color is really emphasizing something important.
In this case here the color is emphasizing on something that is more background information
and not really your own result.
But your poster, it's your poster / your research
and you should pitch your results to the person who is looking at your poster, and not some "boring" background information.
The next poster was part of my bachelor thesis.
As you can see in this poster, putting boxes around your text can give your poster a little bit more structure.
However the layout on this poster is still very tight, there is not a lot of (free) space.
And if you look clotser you will spot some small arrows
that are pointing to the next box you should read.
If your poster layout needs arrows
to give the reader a guide which panel to read next, your layout is probably not very good.
So the poster should have a natural flow and should be self explaining
which way it should be read.
I also think text wise this is still a little bit to much
and you should cut down on the information.
Here you see a poster from my bachelor thesis again.
this one I made a few years later as part of an English course.
And as you can see here, the amount of text is a lot less
and also the bars on the side
give the poster a nice structure and flow.
So it's not confusing, you know where to start reading and which way to go.
Actually I stole this poster idea pretty much from another poster.
But thats not a big problem, because I think
design is always redesign.
Look at some posters and get inspired
and just take the best parts from each poster for your own poster.
At the end of the day, it wont look one to one the same
you always will have your own style a little bit in there.
I also want to point out that you have a picture of your organism
which is always nice, because people might not be familiar with the organism
in this case its some fungi on the anthers of the flower (the black dust).
And then in the material and methods, you have a nice flow chart
which makes it really easy to explain to your viewers what you actually did.
And then the most emphasize is of cause on your results.
And also the graph here is keep very very simple.
And you have a map, which shows some population structure.
So with a poster like this, it's really easy to explain the results of your work.
This poster I made in my time in Sweden in a group project with some other people where we were working on sustainability.
And actually I really like this poster because its very simple.
We brought this poster to a conference
and it was really nice to discuss the poster in front of people
because you have only very little text and a few pictures
so it's not overwhelming, it's very clear.
And you can point out the important thing of your project very well with the pictures.
So it's easy to pitch the main idea to the people who are interested in your poster.
Whoever this really depends on the topic you want to present
because if you have some scientific experiments and things like this
you also need to include some background information and material and methods things.
So in this case it was just a (small) project we were working on, not so much data more like a concept
on a project that could be implemented in schools to get kids reconnected to nature.
This next poster is also a little bit unconventional.
This one is about a concept in developed for sustainability
to visualise the main idea of sustainability in another way.
I actually never had the chance to show this off somewhere
but I think still it's a nice layout, because it's not your traditional layout in columns.
I mean columns give you a very nice structure.
But if we see this poster compared to your standard posters on a conference
I'm pretty confident that people get interested in the poster
because it just looks different, it stands out.
And standing out should also be a goal of your poster to get people interested.
However this is kind of a difficult thing because it is scientific data
you can't do it like this most of the time.
This is more like a louse concept and you don't have the typical structure of your normal poster.
But maybe keep in mind that you should have one eye catching element on you poster, even if it's traditionally organised.
I always like to look at some info-graphics on the web.
So if you do a quick search on google for info-graphics, you will find a lot of them.
The funny thing about info-graphics is, they also present some information to you
but usually people really like to read them, because they are prepared in a nice visual way.
And this is incredibly difficult to really make also with your scientific data
because scientific data is a lot of the times very complex.
But if you manage to break down your data
and make it even a little bit like a info-graphic, I think it will look very nice.
So you could set your goal to make an poster that looks like an info-graphic, or even a movie poster or an ad.
And if you keep those ideas and concepts in mind, while you're making your poster
you poster hopefully will not look like an info-graphic
but it also won't look like a boring poster with a lot of text in it.
So it really is something in between which which I think is very appropriate for a scientific poster.
So it will be visible in the mass of posters you find on conferences
but it won't right jump at you in a very negative "too manny colors" way.
This one is the latest poster I made, and I had it on two conferences in 2012.
And one one I actually won a poster prize YAAAY! ; )
This one is presenting the results of my master thesis.
And as you can see here, I have basically two main figures with the results
so you really want to cut down on your results, and only show the most important key things.
And other than that, it's a pretty standard poster with a two column layout
and with a eye catching Dinocras cephalotes, the organism I worked with, on the side here.
Also notice again, we have a flow chart for our methods.
And one thing I like, the main question and some key conclusions
so if someone walks by your poster, he can read the question; what was the goal of the research and then the conclusions
what did they find out. And then decide if they are interested in reading the poster further.
What is maybe bad about the poster
that it's a little bit clouded, could be a little bit less text a little bit more free space
and also not every one might be a big fan of the colorfulness of this poster.
So with colors it's kind of up to you which colors you like.
But don't overdo it with to much colors
keep it very consistent with the layout and also the text, don't mix to much stuff.
Actually the secret, why I think I won did win poster prize
is on the corner right here.
I made a video for the poster, so people could take their smartphones and scan
the little QR code down here
to see a 3 minute video presentation about my work.
And if you want to take a look at the video you can click on the poster right now to see that video.
And actually as you are watching this video almost to the end, I shall give you another great tip how to win a poster prize.
I went to two conferences where this hapend, it's quite funny.
Because if you build a moddel of your organism
this sounds very stupid, but
like build an insect out of some paper or what ever and
have it this size and just put it on your poster.
Because this really helps your poster to stand out
and on two conferences people who did this actually won a poster prize.
So even if you don't study biology
if you study physics or what not, you could build the star that you are working on
of you could build a little house if you are an architect.
just something that is sitting in front of your poster
and this will really help your poster to stand out and
I would say very likely help you win a poster prize.
So if you are building something like this, make sure to send me a picture and tell me how it went on the conference.
However, don't get to excited, don't get especially your hopes to high for conferences.
Sometimes it really can happen that no one cares about your poste ror your topic
and you just sit there for two hours and no one is talking to you.
this pretty much hapend to one of my posters
but then on the next conference I got a prize for it.
But don't focus to much on those things, make a great poster because you enjoi doing it
and because you think its fun to have a nice looking poster.
All right I hope I was able to give you dome do's and dont's.
We now going to get into much more detail when we are making the poster
and I will point out all the little things you should take good care of.
I have chosen to make a poster about how to make a poster, because I think
this will help me personally to keep it to 300 words
and tell you only the key things that you should really watch out for when you are making your poster.
Because I could stay here for one more hour and tell you all the little details
but in the end it's really important that the key points on your poster are right.
However, I will also if I make a poster about scientific things, about my research again
I will also talk about this a little bit more, so that you can also see what it is like to make a scientific poster about your research project.
Because I think making a poster about your research, it's a little bit more difficult than making a poster about some
arbitrary topic like "how to make a poster" or "what color is the sun" or what ever.
So you can click here to go to the next step
and there we will open up InDesign and start making our poster.
However I really hope you have watched the first video, you can watch it here
and check that you have checked of all points in the
"What to do before making a poster" check list
in the introductory video. So, let's get started!