Guidelines for Producing an Effective Poster

Think about what material to include
- What is the BIG idea? It should be simple to understand, quickly!
- Use examples -- in pictures!
  If possible, just one example, used many times to illustrate the basic ideas.
Poster should include (at least)
- Foundations -- what problem are you trying to solve?
  Why should anyone care, if you succeed?
- Your approach (high level)
- Your results -- theoretical, empirical, or whatever.
"Mother test":
Your mother should be able to understand the intro (Foundations), and conclusion.
(And possibly stuff in the middle... sometimes)

FORM:

A poster is more like a PPT presentation, than an essay.
The poster should be easy on the eyes... with
- pictures
- few words (lots of white space)
- large letters
Imagine you are in a room full of posters, all vying for attention.
A poster with small letters in dense paragraphs looks intimidating -- like you will have to concentrate to get anything...
Would you rather stop at that poster, or one that looks easy to follow, with big pictures, lots of white space, ...?
Stand 2-3meters away from your poster. You should be able to get most of the ideas from there -- ie, based only on the figures, and without the "small print".
It is ok to use just PHRASES, rather than complete sentences, within BULLETs.
Extra words are problematic, as ...
- If people are reading, they aren't listening!
- Many words make a poster look crowded, and like it will be hard to understand.
  ⇒ potential viewers will go to another poster ...

Present the material primarily in TOP-to-BOTTOM columns, rather than left-to-right rows.
(See also Presentation.
Otherwise, material presented primarily left-to-right will cause the reader to slide left to right, then jump back to the left margin, then slide to the right, then ...
This is especially problematic if you have many viewers -- as this means the "sliding viewer" will be distracting to others!
Use "Figure 1 ..." or "Table 3 ..." only if you need to refer to a figure/table. This is typically NOT needed, as you can just use proxity, or arrows, to give reference.

Think about the "mechanics/physics" of the presentation.
If you are RIGHT-handed, then your poster should be on your RIGHT side, so you can easily point to material, while facing your audience, without your arm crossing your body. (Left-handers, do the opposite.)
As you progress over the poster, you will be blocking some viewers. This is unavoidable... just try to minimize it.
In general, you should devote your attention to the current viewer(s).
If others arrive during this presentation, you might want to interrupt yourself only to say "I should be able to restart in X minutes"... where X is 5 or 10 or whatever.
If you have a business card, feel free to make them available to the viewers, typically as they are leaving (especially if they seemed genuinely interested).
Turn off your cell phone!