VirtualPosterTour-PPs

            When creating a poster, it is important to keep in mind that you must visually attract someone to it and draw them in. As seen from the examples, this can be done with bright colors, pictures, and diagrams. From the posters I looked at, most of them were laid out in such a way that my eyes were able to flow from one section to the other without being bogged down by too many words and too much information. Positioning of data is important while constructing a poster. If the data is too cluttered, the reader might get overwhelmed and lose interest in what is being presented. While having enough data on the poster is crucial, leaving some negative space is just as important so that the eye is not constantly bombarded with information and can relax between sections. I also observed the limited amount of lines per section. The authors of several posters seemed to limit themselves to just a few lines of text so that it seemed easy to read and comprehend. These factors are important to keep in mind as they would prove beneficial when constructing a poster of my own.

            Conversely, I noticed some details on the example posters that should not be replicated. For example, several posters were very drab and unappealing. They were only designed in black and white and lacked any sort of visual aid. Bogging down the poster with only text and data tables can make the poster a little intimidating to those who don’t quite understand what you are talking about. It also gives the appearance that the information on the poster will be difficult to grasp as you’d have to constantly bounce between tables and text so you can grasp the information being presented. I also noticed that some posters write in paragraphs rather than short two to three sentence blurbs. To be honest, I didn’t even read the paragraphs while looking at the poster because I thought it would take up too much time. Paragraphs can be daunting to an outside reader due to the high concentration of information and the amount of time it takes to read through it all. Lastly, I noticed that several posters had their titles the same size and font as the text in the body of the poster. Without the title being any different than the rest of the poster, there is no visual context as to what is being presented. Instead, it is easy to glaze over the title and move on to something else that come across as more appealing and interesting based on the title alone. Such factors like the ones discussed above should be avoided as they would not contribute to the presentation of a well-laid out poster.