Rethinking the Science Poster

 Note: While still relevant, this blog post was developed for APA 2019. View poster instructions for APA 2023 here.

If you’ve been to a scientific conference recently, or have been following the media buzz, you’ll know that there is a growing movement away from dense, text-heavy posters and towards posters that are more straightforward, engaging, and easy to understand in a short glance.

The discussion was kicked off by doctoral student Mike Morrison’s  video “How to create a better research poster in less time.” In this video, he lays out a way to “improve the knowledge transfer efficiency” of posters by clearing the clutter and homing in on the critical point that needs to be relayed.

At APA, we’re excited by this new approach, want to apply effective psychological principles to the way we present information in our posters, and think that it has many benefits for presenters and attendees. We like it so much that we’ve even created our own APA mod template of the Better Poster and encourage presenters to use it, or a similar format, at APA 2019. Here’s why:

• The new format fosters conversation
• It’s easy to identify critical takeaways
• It’s visually appealing and eye-catching which makes people more likely to stop and read more
• It helps posters stand out from the pack
• It encourages presenters to be creative, think about how to translate their findings, and focus on what is important.

What’s different about the APA mod?

• The poster title is across the top because many attendees will scan the convention program and make a note of poster titles that are of interest to them. We want to make sure it’s easy for them to find the posters that they’ve flagged to check out.
• Since not everyone is a fan of QR codes, we’ve dropped them in favor of a URL to the full paper. Bitlys or other short links are recommended.
• We’ve made a few other minor changes to the language that we believe are more inclusive (goodbye Ammo Bar, hello Wonkville)

TEMPLATE DOWNLOAD

Interested in learning more? Listen to NPR’s coverage of this idea. To Save The Science Poster, Researchers Want To Kill It And StartOver