MAKING POSTERS for Molecular Biology Research

1. Start early. Posters take much longer to get right than anyone ever thinks.


2. Do not open a digital poster program (Powerpoint or other) until you complete steps 3, 4, and 5. That is, you should plan this out in analog, with a pencil and paper.
   

3. Map out the storyboard for your results section. This is the key part of your poster, and it should be planned before you do anything else. On scratch paper, write and draw out the following stuff.

1. Make a list of all of the results that you’ve gotten along the way. A gel is a result. The appearance of petri plates are results, etc.
2. Can you form those results into a story? Some results may be more important to your story than other results. Narrow your results down to the 4-8 most important ones.
3. For each result, devise a graphical way to represent the result. If the experiment that you did prior to the data needs explaining, think of a way to graphically show that, too.
4. Now think of a “headline” to put above this graphic that could communicate what your interpretation of the data is, what your conclusion is. Write the headline as a declarative phrase.
5. Using a separate sheet of scratch paper for each result (as if it were a powerpoint slide), write the declarative header and sketch the graphic that explains the experiment and shows the data.
6. Lay all of these sheets out and see if you can follow along the story of your research just by reading the headers and looking at the graphics. Show it to your friends and see if they can, too.
7. If you or they cannot follow the story, what else do you need? Make the appropriate changes until the story makes sense.

4. Now devise a research question or hypothesis (a research objective) that makes sense to ask  --  and then the story of your research answers, or begins to answer. Save this to write as the final sentence of your Introduction.
   

5. Take a look at your Objective from step 4. What information does a totally naive person need to know in order for that objective to make sense? Prepare the content for your Introduction by writing the key pieces of info that:

1. describe the general phenomenon and interesting things about it
2. list some more specific facts/observations that we know something about
3. describe the mystery that you are interested in trying to shed light on (what do we not know?)
4. again, this content should go from general to specific (an inverted triangle) and give a reader enough of a background so that they can understand and appreciate your research objective, why you did this research.
5. Make the final sentence of your Introduction a statement of your research objective.
6. Do some self-evaluation:
   

6. You now have enough content to start constructing the actual poster.

1. Take a look at these websites for information, things to think about, etc. Some offer templates, which are fine, but you also have access to a molecular biology - specific template that I made below.

1. http://colinpurrington.com/tips/academic/posterdesign . This is a  humorous introduction to many of the things to think about regarding making and presenting a poster.
2. http://www.ncsu.edu/project/posters/NewSite/index.html. This has some good things to consider as you try to make headers that are informative for each of your pieces of data. Also, good general poster planning and making information.
3. http://www.bio.miami.edu/ktosney/file/PosterHome.html. Excellent in explaining what makes headers and graphics effective. Gives positive examples and negative examples.

2. Download this template poster. It has suggestions and appropriate sizes. Colors, box sizes, and other things can be changed to make the poster your own.