Dr. Miguel Balbin
Sep 7, 20212 min
Updated: Jan 17
You’ve been at your lab bench all month. Working tirelessly in the pursuit of science no doubt.
Now you're long overdue to check your emails. So you open up Gmail to be bombarded by 100+ unreads. You let out a loud sigh, and grudgingly scroll through.
Oh, what’s this? You’ve been selected to present a scientific poster at a national conference? Great! You’ve got the right story that could even win a prize!
… wait, it’s this weekend? In THREE DAYS?
That email was sent 4 weeks ago?!
You find yourself praying to a deity of scientific poster templates to have a quick and easy solution.
So you grab your double-shot espresso, sit down, and start contemplating your course of action:
“I think there’s an old scientific poster template made by one of our old PhD students. Here we go,‘SciPosterTemp(FINAL_v2).pptx’."
"Let’s open it up and-YIKES, what’s with that colour scheme?!”
You close PowerPoint.
“There’s no way I can salvage this thing! What else is there…”
“All good, all good. Deep breaths. I reckon I’m not that bad a graphic designer, I’ll try to make it myself from scratch. I’ve got enough coffee to skip a night or two of sleep - let’s stay perfectly calm…”
You take a sip of your lukewarm coffee.
“Wait, how do I do this… File… Pen tool… hey that’s not the shape I wanted to make… huh…”
You close Adobe Illustrator. You didn’t practice enough with illustration software.
“Is it 2 am already…?”
“Google. Please. Give me a good poster template. I need something that’ll turn heads. I beg you. Please make my life easier! I’ve lived an honest life up to this poi-”
And then, you find this blog.
“Hey… these… these look great! Let’s go with these!”
Relax, your prayers have been answered! Let us be your guardian angel.
We now have several kits for creating stunning conference poster templates, so that you can make an epic splash at your next research conference!
Our templates will definitely help you create posters at the speed of light. But did you know that people are also winning awards with them?
Here are a couple of examples of award-winning posters that have used our template! 👇
But don't forget, the key to good scientific poster design is not to overload it with information. With great templates comes even greater responsibility!
Remember:
A poster is like a graphical abstract - its job is to provide a visual summary.
Keep it concise and provide the detail in person. The conversation is just as important!
Maybe you’ve got more than three days (let’s hope!)
… and perhaps all you need is inspiration? Or maybe you need the right software?
Check out some examples from real-world research, as well as our tips on topics like colour-scheme, choosing a layout, or even adding a QR code. Did you know there’s ways to make your poster interactive in this age of online conferences? Posters are constantly evolving!
You can also check out all these topics in our step-by-step guide on How to Design an Award-Winning Conference Poster. It’s our tried-and-tested recipe for success!