Creating a Research Poster

This research guide is intended for all learners and researchers to assist with the creation of posters for research dissemination, class assignments, conferences, and more. The guide offers resources to assist in the creation of posters but is not intended to be a style guide or framework that you must abide by.

• Plan ahead - Summarizing research in a concise and clear way is a skill.
  • Take time to plan out what points are vital to your work and need to be communicated on the poster.
  • Think: What does the person reviewing this poster need to understand? How can I make that clear?
• Sketch out or format a rough draft to help you visualize the poster before formatting.
• Think about accessibility/utilizing Universal Design and not just how to get all the content on the poster. If the poster can't be read or interacted with then your work will be for nothing.

Tips for Writing

• Boil down information into bullet points where possible.
• Avoid wordiness and jargon.
• Use active voice. (The Purdue OWL has a great guide on active vs. passive voice)
• Use vocabulary that your audience understands.
• Spell out acronyms the first time you use them. Even if you think your audience will know the acronym, you should still spell it out at least once.

Feel free to make a copy or re-use this page as long as you credit UNM HSLIC.

This guide was created by a Health Sciences Library and Informatics Center staff member and is licensed by the Health Science Library and Informatics Center of the University of New Mexico under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.