Designing creative academic posters: behind-the-scenes and some top tips

Last week, I was thrilled to learn that my poster came second place in the STEMM category of the University of Exeter's PGR Festival of Research poster competition!

In this blog post, I'm going to take you behind the scenes of creating this poster, before sharing some of my top tips for designing your own research poster.

Designing this poster

As someone who loves visual communication, designing a research poster is one of my favourite parts of any research project! When I saw that the University of Exeter's PGR Festival of Research included a poster competition, I knew that I wanted to enter. The only problem...I haven't finished my data analysis, yet, so I wasn't sure exactly what story I wanted my poster to tell!

When I started brainstorming, I thought it could be fun to create a research poster that looks like a board game. I've made several infographics in the past that have drawn on the visuals of games – I think it's a fun and engaging way of communicating data, but it's not something I've done for a full research poster before.

This poster was inspired by the Game of Life, one of my favourite childhood board games (that I can still convince my family to play occassionally over the Christmas holidays). For this poster, I wanted a game that had a logical flow from A to B (as opposed to a circular board). The Game of Life fit perfectly – you move across the board, from college to retirement, collecting LIFE tiles that are revealed at the end of the game. Helpfully, LIFE and FARM are both four letters, so it was easy to draw on some of the game's visuals in my design.

Below, you can see some steps during my design process. I used the colours and fonts from my PhD project to create a "board" based off the Game of Life, to which I added some of the joys and challenges of farming. The "Future Farm" tiles at the bottom of the poster highlight some of the key themes running through the future visions described by my participants. At the top of the poster, I outlined the context of my research, my fieldwork, and "how to play" the game.

While I was designing the poster, I felt slightly nervous that my farming participants may think the use of a "game" to highlight their joys, challenges, and future hopes could be viewed as trivialising their voices. But I also thought that by creating something radically different to a typical academic poster, it would stand out during the poster display and could (hopefully) get more people to read the poster, thereby raising awareness of the issues facing farmers.

After getting two friends to proofread my poster, I sent it off to be printed at the university Print Services and was surprised when it was ready to be picked up less than two hours later! I'm always shocked at how large A0 posters really are!

This afternoon, I attended the poster presentation session in the Forum, where I got to see the other posters from the competition. Stepping outside of the boundaries of a more conventional academic poster, I knew there was a risk the judges would either love it or hate it, so I was really pleased to learn it had been chosen as second place in the STEMM category. I had printed out Future Farm tiles that I let people take away with them.

Thank you to the judges and to everyone who came to chat today during the poster presentation. And massive congratulations to the other competition winners!

My top tips for designing an academic poster

Now it's your turn! Here are some of my top tips for poster design...

Design for your intended audience

Before you start any visual communication project, it's important you have an idea of your intended audience. For a research poster, ask yourself: Where is your research poster going to be displayed? Will people be viewing it in person or digitally? Will they be interacting with your poster while you are present (e.g. during a poster presentation) or will it be on display when you are not there? What background knowledge will your audience have (e.g. will they understand discipline-specific language)? And most importantly: What is the key message you are hoping to communicate?

Use a design tool you feel comfortable with

I design all of my visual communication projects in Affinity, however, if you are not comfortable using a professional graphic design software, there are other tools you can use, including PowerPoint or Canva. I would definitely recommend PowerPoint over Canva, but the most important thing is that you use a tool you feel comfortable with! There are lots of poster templates available online for these tools, which can help if you're feeling intimidated by designing a poster, but may also limit your creativity if you feel like you are being boxed in by a template. If you think you're going to be doing lots of design work in the future (including posters, infographics, figures, social media posts, reports, etc), I would recommend putting in the time to learn Affinity – here's why. (And don't worry, it's free!)

Try to minimise the amount of text you have on your poster

I know, I know, this is far easier said than done. But please, whatever you do, don't try to cram your whole paper onto a poster! What are the key highlights or messages you want viewers to take away after reading your poster? Focus on those. If you have extra information you want to share, add a QR code to the bottom of your poster where interested viewers can learn more.

Don't be afraid of white space

This is very much linked to the previous tip – it's perfectly okay to leave parts of your poster blank. You don't want your poster to feel crammed. Add margins and respect them!

Use colour appropriately

Picking a colour palette using Coolors is one of my favourite parts of any graphic design project! If your research project (or funder) already has an established colour scheme, don't feel like you have to incorporate all the colours – I would recommend choosing one or two and then using different tints of that colour (like I've done in the poster below on the left). Make sure the colour contrast is suitable (you need your text to be legible!) using the Colour Contrast Checker tool. If you have graphs or other scientific figures, check they are suitable for people with colour blindness using this Colour Blindness Simulator.

Make sure spacing and alignment are consistent

Consistent spacing and alignment is one of the easiest ways to make sure your poster looks professional. Affinity, PowerPoint, and Canva all have tools to align and distribute elements – use them!

Stick to one or two fonts

Don't go overboard with different fonts. I would recommend using one font for the body of your poster, and if you really want to, a different one for your title and headings. Make sure the fonts you choose are easily legible – I would stick to Sans Serif fonts (my favourite is Avenir Next), over Serif or Script fonts. Avoid using CAPSLOCK – it can be more difficult to read. Instead, add emphasis to text using font size, bold, italics, or colour.. You should have a text hierarchy that clearly distinguishes between your title, heading, subheadings, and the body of your text, making it easy for your reader to navigate the content of your poster.

Be careful with acronyms

You can't assume everyone who sees your poster is going to read it from start to finish, so if you write out acronyms in full in the introduction, they may not read them if they're just interested in your findings. Again, it's important to know your audience. If there's any doubt whether people will understand acronyms, just write out the full words each time.

Ensure images are high resolution

Blurry or pixelated images immediately make your poster look unprofessional. If you can't find a high quality version of your image – don't include it. Find a different image. (And maybe avoid generating all of your images with AI...?)

Consider adding an interactive element to your poster

I designed a poster for the AI for Net Zero Conference based on our research group's project exploring how Generative AI models "see" climate change. We incorporated an interactive element into the poster, where conference attendees could use stickers to vote on two questions about AI imagery. This was a great way of starting conversations with other conference attendees during the poster presentation session, and is definitely something I hope to incorporate into future posters I design!

Have fun!

As you've probably seen in this blog post, I've designed some fairly traditional academic posters and some slightly less conventional posters. My favourite posters are definitely the ones where I've allowed myself to have fun, like the poster below, based on my MSc dissertation. Before you ask, yes – that is a line graph made out of french fries and a green bean! Most academic posters look the same, so I would encourage you to ask yourself: what can you do to make your poster stand out and be remembered? In this post, I've shared some of my top tips for designing a beautiful research poster, but sometimes breaking these rules is what will make your poster really stand out!

Want to learn more?

I've given several workshops on visual communication – including poster design – and would be happy to speak with you and your colleagues! Feel free to drop me an email or message me on LinkedIn. If you are looking for more in-depth training on how to use Affinity for science communication, I would recommend checking out the workshops hosted by Infohackit.

Thanks for reading, and happy poster designing!