IE 407 GUIDELINES FOR POSTER PRESENTATION

This guide presents the basic features of preparing a poster, and format of an acceptable
scientific poster. It should be comprehended that posters are visual aids to present your work,
and that scientific posters have nothing related with bills of other kinds of posters.

Title banner of the poster includes title of the work, names of the group members, names of
the supervisors (academic rank excluded!) and name of the department. These should appear
center justified in the banner. You may use the official logos of the university, OSTIM, and
the company.

Main body should emphasize the problem statement of your work.

For the headings, use at most 50 point font size with boldface. For the text, use at most 40
point font size. You may need boldface, underlined or italic font in the text, where available to
emphasize the content.

Use standard font types (Times New Roman, Arial, etc.). For ease of reading Arial could be
preferred. Avoid using more than two font types in the same poster.

Background color should be selected to provide high contrast with the foreground. Soft colors
(pastels and grayscale colors) work well with the eye. You may prefer pale tones of grayscale
with black font color.

Minimum resolution of the poster (including text and visual content) should be at least 200
dpi to avoid blurriness in the printed copy. Paper size should be A2. Paper should weight 90
gr/m or 120 gr/m.

A GREAT POSTER IS...

• Readable: Readability is a measure of how easily the ideas flow from one item to the
next. Text that has lots of grammatical problems, complex or passive sentence
structure, and misspellings is "hard to read".
• Legible: If a text is legible, it can be deciphered. For example, an old book may not be
legible if the paper has corroded or the lettering has faded. A common error in poster
presentations is use of fonts that are too small to be read from 1 m. away, a typical
distance for reading a poster.
• Well organized: Spatial organization makes the difference between reaching 95%
rather than just 5% of your audience: time spent hunting for the next idea or piece of
data is time taken away from thinking about the science.
• Succinct: Studies show that you have only 11 seconds to grab and retain your
audience's attention so make the punchline prominant and brief. Most of your
audience is going to absorb only the punchline. Those who are directly involved in
related research will seek you out anyway and chat with you at length so you can
afford to leave out all the details and tell those who are really interested the "nitty
gritty" later.

Important Note: Each group will prepare two posters, one (Turkish copy) for the company
and one (English copy) for the department.

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I. TWO WAYS TO MAKE A POSTER ARE TO

• have someone else do it (FORBIDDEN for IE 407 and IE 408), or

Designing the poster panels deserves consideration. Most posters are most quickly made using
some kind of computer software. A word processing program plus a few graphics packages
(e.g. Microsoft Powerpoint, Macromedia Freehand, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop,
Adobe PageMaker) are important tools. Of these, Powerpoint has the least sophisticated
graphics options. If you have not tried computer graphics or are just starting out, find
someone whose poster you like and ask them what they use and if they like it.

II. TO BEGIN:

• decide what the main message is: Keep it short and sweet and make this your title!
Use the active voice (i.e., avoid "ing" on the ends of verbs) and avoid the verb "to be"
whenever possible.
• lay out your panels crudely: Before you actually spend time making the final panels
of the poster, take pieces of paper that are about the right size and see if you can
actually make it all fit. This will save you a lot of time in the long run.
• ELIMINATE all extraneous material: Given that the average poster gazer spends
less than 10 minutes on your work and you have 11 seconds to trap your subject
before they move on, only show data that adds to your central message.

III. POSTER LAYOUT:

People approach new information in a known spatial sequence: we track vertically from
center to top to bottom, and horizontally from left to right. This means that you should put the
most important message in the center top position followed by the top left, top right, bottom
left, and finish in the bottom right corner. That's why the poster title should be your punch
line because, in that position, the title and your name will be seen in the first 11 seconds that a
person looks at the poster.

The overall format of a good poster is dictated by the way we assimilate information. For
example, you would never put your first panel on the right and ask your reader to proceed to
the left because we are not trained to read that way. Newspaper format, two vertical columns
that are arranged so that you read the left one first and then the right one, is highly "readable"
since the reader does not spend time figuring out which panel to read next. A left to right
horizontal rows arrangement works too but is not as common.

Space is important in a poster: without it, your reader has no visual pauses to think. Books
leave space on the margins and by having chapters. Posters that are crammed with
information are tiring to read and are seldom read in their entirety. Omit all extraneous text or
visual distractions, including borders between related data and text, so the reader can
assimilate your ideas easily.

Size of poster elements or the fonts in each panel can serve to emphasize the main points. For
example, making your subheadings in all capitals and two font sizes larger than the rest of the
text on the same panel will draw the reader's eye first, and so be emphasized. The use of
multiple fonts in a poster can distract from the science.

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You will lend the most power to your words if you spatially arrange the text in each panel of
your poster following the same principles used for the poster layout as a whole.

It takes time to make a great poster. Regardless of format, allow 2 to 3 days to assemble all
the bits and pieces, such as photos etc, and then 1.5 to 2 days to assemble the poster. That last
bit of data you rush around to get at the last moment will go completely unnoticed if your
poster is messy and disorganized, i.e. illegible and unreadable.

IV. FONT CHOICES

• Size:Font sizes need to be big to be effective. A good rule is to stand back from your
own poster: if you, who are familiar with the material, cannot easily read it from 1 m.
away, your audience will certainly not be able to.
• Highlighting with text format: Indents set text apart and are great for short lists.
Justification of text in the center of a line will draw attention.
• Basic font choice and highlighting with font variations: Choose a basic font whose
"e's" and "a's" stay open at all sizes and that is supported by your printer. Bookman,
Helvetica, and Geneva are examples of good choices. The choice of serif or sans serif
is largely a personal matter. If your font is not supported by the printer, you will get
ragged edges on all your letters. Highlighting a few parts of the text is done easily
with: capitals as in the "go CHILDREN slow" or switch styles (bold, italics, shadow,
etc.).

V. COLOR

• Ways to add color: A color border or background is a fast way to add color to a
poster. Choosing colors that do not compete with your data, that look good once
printed, and that color blind people can see is wise.
• Contrast: Proper contrast will reduce eye strain and make the poster more legible and
interesting visually. Again, be careful that the color does not outclass the visual impact
of your data: too much contrast is hard on the eyes and can distract the reader from
your data. Adding light color backgrounds to your figures can make the poster
attractive. For example, using white lettering and lines on a blue background can make
your poster eyecatching. Like a painting, poster elements can also be double matted
physically or digitally to add interesting contrast.

Do get a small print of your large format poster before you print the big one to check for all
these color issues.

VI. CHECK

• have others review it for you: Have some people look over your poster before you
call it “done”. If they are confused, it is far better to fix it now than to lose people at
the meeting. Pay particular attention to things that may not be necessary: eliminate
everything that you can!
• do take a moment for ethical considerations: Do follow basic rules for authorship,
citation of the literature, etc. because the consequences for ethical breaches are quite
serious (TBI, ASPB policies). For example, images can be touched up with Adobe
Photoshop. State exactly what modifications have been made to the images - it is very

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 easy to alter your own data (falsification) and you must be able to defend any and all
of your changes. Do credit others for their work (plagiarism). If you supply special
information about the company, you should ask the company for permission to use
(permission).

VII. FINISHING

It is trivial to assemble a poster once you have decided on and made all the individual
elements. Be sure to give yourself enough time to finish the poster, say 1-3 days, so you have
time to reprint it if necessary to revise color or content, or to simply get into the printing
queue!

Good luck and have fun making your poster and showing it. Displaying your finished work is
a big accomplishment so take time to enjoy it and your interactions at the meeting. Remember
that enthusiasm is contagious. Be on time and enthusiastic about showing your poster to
colleagues at the assigned times during the meeting - it is a fine opportunity to advertise
yourself and your work!