Creating posters to present scientific data

What’s important in terms of the structure?

A scientific poster should be divided into a header, body and footer section
  1. The header has relatively set formal requirements to meet: Title, author details, institute or university address and a logo / logos.
  2. The body section is where the actual content is presented: Introduction, main section (your findings/arguments) and finally a summary. This part is where you can be the most creative, but is also where the most planning, patience and time is required to implement it.
  3. The references are listed in the footer. If not already done in the header: information on the authors, institute or university address and a logo / logos.

Structure of the body section

First of all, you should start by structuring the content and, above all, designing the body section. Here you should package your content as a story by following the classic structure of a narrative: this has
  • an introduction,
  • a main part and
  • a conclusion.

NB: Make sure you write short, concise texts with a clear, easy-to-understand sentence structure. Complex contexts can be grasped more easily in short, simply structured sentences than intricate, convoluted sentences. It is important that the people looking at your poster can quickly grasp the contents of the continuous texts. If possible, you can also present content using bullet-point lists.

Example: typical structure of a natural science poster
  • The header contains the title, the author(s), the institute address and the logos of the institutions involved.
  • The body consists of a very short introduction (not more than 150 words), a main section consisting of three to four experiments (each with a figure including a legend or key) and a summary preferably with a model (conclusion).
  • References/sources are listed in the footer.

NB: Footnotes are contrary to the principles of posters and should be avoided if possible.



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