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Logistics
- Date: Friday January 24, 2025
- Location: Ballroom Foyer, Third Floor, Residence Inn Hotel Berkeley, 2121 Center Street Berkeley, CA 94704
- Poster Requirements: Please create, print, and bring your own poster. The maximum size is 4ft x 4ft.
- Mounting Supplies: We will provide thumbtacks for mounting your posters to the boards.
- Setup and Takedown: Setup will take place at 4 - 5:30 pm and session ends at 9 pm. Please note that there will be no competition or judging for the posters.
- Poster Disposal: Any posters left behind after the conference will be recycled, so please ensure you take your poster with you.
General recommendations
Before you start working on your poster, ask your colleagues if your institution has a poster template. Many institutions have templates these days for branding purposes. Keep in mind that you are not only representing your own science with your poster, but also your home institution.
A short and simple introduction to the subject of “How to Make a Poster” can be found on the website of the APS ( https://www.aps.org/careers/advice/designing-poster-presentation). The website does not go into a lot of detail but provides an efficient overview of common pitfalls and important details about what to look out for. Whether this is your first poster or your tenth, this information is very helpful.
It is important that you practice presenting your poster, just like you would practicing for a talk. As always, the most important thing to keep in mind with every presentation is to “Know your audience”. APS section meetings and CU*IP meetings are attended by a scientifically diverse audience. Don’t use scientific jargon or acronyms that are common in your group without explaining them. Physics is an incredibly diverse area of science, expressions like “Fermi level” or “t2g-orbitals” may be common household names to a solid state physicist but they may be Bohemian villages to an astrophysicist.
Detailed guidelines regarding the structure
If you never made a poster before or always wanted to know on how to improve the impact of your poster presentation we recommend the following resource that describes the creative process in more detail:
Hess, Tosney and Leigel at North Carolina University provide a comprehensive introduction into Creating Effective Poster Presentations. This site goes over the important elements necessary for having a successful poster even beyond the poster itself, including sections “Define Your Message”, “Know Your Audience”, and “Write an Effective Abstract” (spoiler alert: the abstract is important to get your poster accepted, it should not go in your poster). It also critiques some examples.
Step by Step instructions
If you prefer detailed step by step instructions you can find them following the next two links in which two different philosophies are described
The traditional poster layout and contents can be found in Scientific Posters: A Learner's Guide by Weaver, Shaul, Griffy, Lower. A contemporary (“Mike Morrison”) layout is presented in the video How to create a better research poster in less time (#betterposter Generation 2).
Even if you go for the traditional layout the Mike Morrison video is worth watching as it focuses on the important “Know Your Audience”, i.e. the dummies that will be passing by your poster.
Optional reading
According to the paper “Academic conference posters: Describing visual impression in pharmacy education” (Khadka, Hold, Peeters), either layout can be used effectively (or ineffectively).