Creating a Research Poster: Example

Why: 

1. Too much text
2. Background image is distracting
3. Text box backgrounds are dark, which makes text really hard to read
4. Text box backgrounds are all different colors, for no reason
5. Text boxes are different widths 
6. Text boxes not separated from each other by pleasing “white” space
7. Text box edges not aligned
8. Text justified, which causes bad inter-word spacing, making it difficult to read
9. Logos are distracting, useless, crowd title
10. Title word art distracting, hard to read, juvenile
11. Title is in all caps abd italicized, which is harder to read and obscures Latin name
12. Author font and color is too loud relative to other text
13. Results are presented in sentences instead of visually with charts
14. Section headers have too much formatting
15. Inclusion of an Abstract consumes space needlessly

Note: This poster was intentionally designed by Colin Purrington to be a bad poster example 

Why: 

1. Minimal text; uses bullet points to convey the most important content for each section
2. Background is a simple, light color
3. Text boxes do not have a separate background color - same as poster background
4. Text boxes are same size, except for the focus of the poster: Results
5. Text boxes separated from each other by pleasing “white” space
6. Text box edges aligned
7. Text left-aligned
8. Logos are minimal and placed toward the bottom
9. Title is in sentence case
10. Authors and Affiliations are readable, but do not distract from the overall poster
11. Results are presented visually with charts
12. Section headers are easy to identify without over formatting