Content structure

Header: Heading/title of the poster
The title of the poster should be meaningful but not too long. A concise, short title is usually easier to fit into the layout. However, it is more informative for the people looking at and reading the poster if the key message of the findings presented on the poster is stated here. If this takes up four lines, there will be no space left for the actual content though.

Body: Introduction
The introduction should state the contents presented in a few, easily understandable sentences. It can never present all the facts in their entire complexity. So it is important to extract the important points and stages and the objectives of the work from them.

Practical exercise: People usually find it difficult to write a short, precise introduction. Take a long article (possibly from the daily newspaper) and summarise it in a maximum of 150 words. With a little practice, you can get into the habit of writing texts to a fixed word count without having to keep checking the length of the text. Having to write a summary of results for different purposes, even at very short notice, is something you’ll have to do time and again as a scientist.

Body: Main section    Each chapter of the main section consists of a heading, a figure and the commenting text (methods, results, discussion with third-party findings or evaluation, where applicable). Methods and findings can be written as continuous text, but also as key words. You don’t need filler words. Each chapter gets its own box (i.e. is visually separated from its surroundings and the other chapters by a frame). Body: Final section Here you summarise the findings and, where appropriate, present them in the form of a model. It makes sense to present a figure here again as well. The heading will be the main conclusion of the findings or can simply be “Conclusion” or “Summary”.   Footer: Bibliography All publications cited on the poster should be listed in the footer of the poster. Since there is limited space on the poster and, of course, your own results are at the fore, you should only choose the really necessary references.