Poster Guidelines Thanks to Geoff Hyde for putting together these guidelines for talks and posters.

Guidelines for Posters

Do not mail your poster presentation in advance bring it with you to the meeting. Display panel boards of 36 feet and 28 feet, will be available at the venue. Please contact the registration desk for details about where your poster should be displayed. Please remove your poster on the last afternoon of the conference. There will be poster sessions during the lunch breaks on all days of the conference. When possible, please stand near your poster during these sessions to answer questions. At poster sessions, many posters are presented simultaneously, so you need to compete for audience attention. Your poster should therefore be bold, well-designed and attractive, even maybe a bit provocative to catch peoples attention. It should be easily readable from a distance of 1.8m (6 feet). Remember that some people will read your poster when you are not there in front of it. This means that even without explanation, the poster should make sense. This does not mean however that it should be comprehensive, rather it should present a simple story, just like your conference Abstract. Therefore, limit yourself to the key aspects of your work. Design Tips 1. Try to produce your entire poster on a single piece of paper A lot of design problems arise when a poster is made from a large number of small pieces of paper. The worst case is using a bunch of A4-sized sheets. This will almost inevitably lead to use of fonts that are too small to read. Also, the gaps between the pages create unwanted breaks (both logical and visual) in the flow of your poster. The easiest way to create a single-piece poster is using the custom settings of Powerpoint or some equivalent. The text of the poster should start in the upper left hand corner. From here, the poster should flow from left to right and top to bottom, using columns if needed. You may wish to use letters, numbers, or arrows as needed to indicate the proper flow to the audience. There are pre-created templates for designing posters in MS PowerPoint. Some of these can be found at: http://www.posterpresentations.com/html/free_poster_templates.html 2. Too much text = loss of audience interest = death of poster What kills most posters is too much text. Avoid full paragraphs. Bullet points are much better than full sentences. See if you can replace text with something more visually appealing, e.g. a map, a flowchart or a self-explanatory picture. As a general rule, the word count should not exceed 600 words. A good way to achieve this is to aim for about 400 words. A very rough guide: Introduction: 150 Materials & methods: 150 Results: 150

Discussion/Conclusions: 150 References only include references vital to your work. These should ideally be in much smaller font size than the body text. Acknowledgments keep them brief, and use a smaller font size. You can see a very nice real-life example of how to shift from a text-heavy style to a pleasant graphical style here: http://www.conbio.org/studentaffairs/posters/commonmistakes.cfm 3. Keep it simple Ask yourself at every step: Have I used many words instead of a few?

e.g. it is likely that climate change may affect bird migration can be replaced with climate change may affect bird migration e.g. invasion by alien species may be aided by the opening of forest gaps is an unnecessarily long version of forest gaps may aid alien invasions

This is especially useful while presenting results.

e.g. Herbivory by butterfly caterpillars was found to be affected by the concentration of secondary compounds in young leaves. An increase in secondary compound concentration led to decreased herbivory. This is the same as saying Secondary compounds in young leaves negatively affect caterpillar herbivory.

Have I used any jargon? Jargon is highly technical language, which, chances are, only your supervisor and (some) labmates will understand. So replace, for example, kleptoparasitism with stealing. It is much simpler to understand, has fewer syllables, and you will not have to explain it to each person who starts to read your poster. 4. Use clear headings and sub-headings These will help people navigate through your poster even if you are not there to explain it to them. Usually poster headings follow roughly the format of a paper but do not include abstract: Title should be large, catchy, and a maximum of two lines in length. The title must be at the top of the board. Introduction In this section you are expected

to provide the general context for your study to indicate a significant conservation-related question addressed by your project: i.e. your aim to explain the specific questions you addressed to help provide insights related to your aim i.e. your objectives.

It is important to understand and make clear the difference between your aim and objectives. Aim-level questions generally address real issues (e.g. What is the abundance of chevrotain in

Bandipur National Park? Is harvesting of forest products in the Great Himalayan National Park increasing or decreasing? How many ground-dwelling skink species live in the forests of Mouling National Park?). Objective-level questions are much more specific and they are focussed on providing data that can provide insights into the aim-level question (e.g. What is the photo capturerecapture density estimate of chevrotain in Bandipur NP? What do villagers living on the edge of GHNP say about the intensity of their forest-harveting harvesting practises in 2010 compared to 2000? Which ground-dwelling skink species are captured in pit-fall traps set up in the three altitudinal zones of Mouling National Park?) Study area (if important) a map here is better than text Materials and methods this is potentially one of the most boring parts of a study, and a graphic or flowchart helps a great deal in keeping the audience interested. Also, look for opportunities to keep the objectives fresh in your audiences mind, by linking the methodology to the objectives. Results The results provide the answers to the objective-level questions only do not stray into discussing the aim-level question. Since objectives typically generate data, the core of the Results section will be graphs, tables etc.. Neat, well-labeled graphs with self-explanatory legends are much better than text. A good thing to remember when making graphs is that the graph should be a stand-alone explanation without having to refer to any other text. Conclusions The discussion component must firstly, and compulsorily, tell the audience how the results help answer the aim-level question. After having discussed the connection between the results and your aim, you can then (optionally) consider the wider implications of your proposed answers, or suggestions for further work. The conclusions should, ideally, be bulleted. 5. Use consistent formatting A very useful way of formatting your poster to improve readability and comprehension is to make your poster modular. In other words, having separate boxes for Introduction, Methods etc., with enough separation between the boxes. This allows the audience to skip parts like the methods and go straight to the discussion or conclusion sections. A poster should have a lot of empty space (about 35%). This does not mean that:

you leave 35% blank and cram the remainder with text you should add text to the empty spaces once you finish the poster!

Avoid using more than: 2 font types 2 font colours 3 font sizes Too many format changes make the audience focus on the formatting rather than on the content.

Font types: there are two types of fonts: serif fonts like Times New Roman and sans serif fonts (which dont have the small things sticking out at the angles of the letters) like Arial. Serif fonts are easier to read in books and papers. Sans serif fonts are easier to read on screen or on posters. Thats why most people prefer using sans serif fonts in posters and PowerPoint presentations. Font sizes: A rough guide to font sizes: Title: 150 pt Section headings: 36 pt Body text: 26 pt Text justification: Text is easier to read when left justified rather than when justified to the left and the right. 6. Use colour wisely Posters are basically a visual medium of presenting data, and colour can help draw people to your poster and help you to present your message. However, if used unwisely, colours can make your poster less attractive and more confusing. Colours should be well co-coordinated and their use consistent throughout. For example, be consistent in the colours (and font type/size) used for subheadings. It is better to err on the side of too little colour than too much! The poster shown on the site below shows a judicious use of colour: http://www.conbio.org/studentaffairs/posters/commonmistakes.cfm Thanks to: Umesh Srinivasan, NCBS, and Jason Tylianakis, University of Canterbury, New Zealand and http://www.conbio.org/studentaffairs/posters/