How to add value to your poster (Comms for GM1)

If you’re a student on the Multidisciplinary Design course (GM1), this episode has been created for you.

Understandably, students tasked with preparing a poster presentation tend to assume that it’s all about the poster itself. 

Of course, the poster’s the primary component of a poster presentation. But there’s more to poster presentation than that. 

This episode explains the why and the how concerning two further components of poster presentations. 

Attending to all three components of a poster presentation will help you to optimise the way you engage your audience and communicate your work.

Contents

• 00:00 What’s in the series?
• 00:58 What are the components of a poster presentation?
• 03:02 Who are you communicating with?
• 05:36 What does your poster not say?
• 07:07 How can you add value with supplementary resources?
• 10:23 Where next?

Further episodes

This episode is the first of a series of episodes on poster presentations. The others are:

• How to optimise your use of space on your poster
• How to optimise design features on your poster

A parallel set of episodes deals with presentations. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Hello and welcome to this recorded series on multidisciplinary design. This series consists of two distinct sets of episodes, all of which concern communicating the design at its various stages. The first set of episodes, hosted by Dr Njimusa, discusses the art of presenting, The topics that will be covered in that series will cover everything from the design of the material through to its delivery, whether individually or in a group. This series, hosted by me, Dr. Bart Hallmark, concerns posters. And I know the conversations that we're going to have will also encompass poster design and the interactive manner in which they can be delivered. So welcome to the first of the series of episodes concerning poster presentations. My name is Bart Hallmark and I'm delighted to be joined today by Anthony Haynes who is the creator director of Frontinus Limited. Hello and welcome Anthony.

SPEAKER_00: 1:11

Hello Bart.

SPEAKER_01: 1:13

I'm very much looking forward to the discussions we're going to have on the topic of posters Anthony and I know the topic of this episode is somewhat interestingly called the components of poster presentations. So Tell me, why have you chosen this topic as our starting point?

SPEAKER_00: 1:28

Well, the best way I can get at that is just by telling a little anecdote. Let's imagine there's a student at university with a supervisor. And the supervisor says to the student, we want you to do a poster presentation. And the student goes home and talks to their housemate or whatever. And they say, I've got to do a poster. so the question there is what's gone wrong in that process and of course the answer is the student has reduced the concept of a poster presentation to the poster itself and that is in my experience what most students actually do they think a poster presentation is all about the poster there are actually three components so It's the poster itself. And then if the poster is displayed in part of a conference or an exhibition or something of that kind, there's usually a session where people can come and walk around the room and look at different posters and so on. And that will lead to a series of conversations between the person standing next to their poster and the punters, let's call them. So that's the second component, the conversation. And then the third component is optional, but I think highly recommended is you can give the person something to take away. So they come and have a talk with you about your poster. And then you say, by the way, before you go, let me just give you this. And there's a takeaway material of some type.

SPEAKER_01: 2:51

That's really interesting. I find myself nodding away here, agreeing entirely with what you're saying and also thinking back to the dim and distant past, recognising exactly those failings in my own work. Now, I know you're going to cover that first component, the poster itself, in subsequent episodes. So let's move on to the second component, which is a conversation that you have with people at a poster presentation whilst they're looking at a poster. I know personally speaking, this was a thing I always used to dread. So what advice can you give people here

SPEAKER_00: 3:21

Anthony? Well I'll just say one thing straight away I think lots of people dread it and there's often a kind of nervousness like someone's hovering around your poster and looking at it and you think do I talk to them or don't I? I think someone has to take charge of that situation and sort of be confident it's like be the host so the person presenting the posters should feel licensed to do that and then what I find people do is they tend to launch into what I call a spiel where they've got several sentences that they've worked out beforehand and they sort of fire them at the person who's looking at the poster. And they tend to do the same set of sentences to each person. So it's a bit like a sales patter. I don't think that works very well because you don't know who they are or why they're there. So you've got no way of knowing whether what you're saying connects with them or not. The best thing is to ask them a few questions. And what you really want to ascertain is, okay, they've been walking around the room. They probably almost certainly haven't been looking at every poster. They've chosen to linger in front of yours and have a look at it. You really want to know why. What's attracted them? What's engaged them? And you also want to know Where are they coming from? I mean, are they... Are they a scientist in the same discipline as you, for instance? Are they perhaps someone in business or industry? Where are they coming from? What kind of knowledge and expertise do they have? So I would ask as many questions as is polite to do so and ask them some questions like, delighted to see your interest in the poster. May I ask you, is this a topic that you're involved with? That type of thing. And what's your background? Do you research this area? Just let them talk about themselves, as most people are quite happy to do. And then you kind of know what they will understand and what they won't understand and what they really want to know. So for instance, it might be someone who's really interested in the applications of a scientific process and not at all interested in the methodology of how you got your findings. Well, okay, so just talk to them about the applications. So that's the first thing. I think of it as like an opportunity you to find out about the person. The second thing you can do is think about what your poster doesn't say. There's no point just repeating what's on the poster. I mean, just give them a chance to consume it. But it may be there's something that you think is really quite significant that's not on the poster itself. It may even be, because sometimes people do this, you actually hold something back a little bit from a poster. So you've got something to talk about. So those would be the two things I would focus on in the conversation.

SPEAKER_01: 6:03

That's really interesting and actually really valuable as well because It's almost shifting the burden of expectation in a way, isn't it? Because you might be standing there, maybe somewhat nervously shaking in front of your poster thinking, oh, please don't talk to me, please don't talk to me. But actually getting somebody else to do that talking really shifts that emphasis, doesn't it? Which is great. And I really like your second point as well, because that reminds me of what some of the advice I used to have when preparing an oral presentation, for example, in terms of how you might have some sway on the question session that followed is by by leaving out Not a key point, but something that the astute listener would have picked up on. And then you can delightfully launch and quite gladly launch into a subject that you know quite well and have got some preparation of while they're being bowled over by something that comes completely out of the left field.

SPEAKER_00: 6:56

That's right, it's like in a presentation where you say, well, I might go into that just now, but of course it is quite a complex and rather interesting debate

SPEAKER_01: 7:05

there. Yes, absolutely. Okay, so let's move on to that. that third component as well. Now, you mentioned that it's sometimes a good idea to have something that our punter can take away. What do you advise here?

SPEAKER_00: 7:17

Well, I think there are three possibilities. And incidentally, all three are good. And if you do them, it kind of makes you look a bit more professional because most people won't have done them. The first thing is to have a handout. So let's say, for example, a piece of A3 paper folded, which effectively gives you four sides of A4. So most people who design posters find it a bit irritating that the space on the poster is so limited. But if you have a handout, that gives you more room, gives you more space, and you can put in things like supplementary data or references or something of that kind. Incidentally, the fact that you you've given yourself more space by having a handout will make you more willing to remove information from the poster. And that will help you not to have a cluttered poster. So one thing is a handout and they can sort of read it over coffee or on the bus home or whatever. The second thing is a QR code. to link to a webpage where you give more information about your work and yourself and so on. And then the third thing that you can have is a business card, which is a piece of information technology that doesn't take much time to create and doesn't cost very much money and is hugely underrated. And I've had people, in fact, quite recently, I've had people say to me, Isn't that all a bit old-fashioned? Well, it is old-fashioned, but actually people keep business cards and take them home with them and often store them in a drawer with other business cards and so on. So your details don't get lost. Whereas if someone says, oh, can I take your details? And then you write it down on the back of a napkin or something, that just gets lost.

SPEAKER_01: 9:00

Invariably, yes. Okay, that's very interesting actually because if I think around the poster presentations that I've been in from the punter's point of view, you see so many different things and a lot of them are interesting. And unless you're specifically taking photographs, for example, of them on your smartphone or something similar, then it's very easy to remember that there was something interesting without actually remembering what that interesting thing was, which is horribly frustrating. So actually having something concrete to take away, like you suggest, I think is really, really

SPEAKER_00: 9:35

good. I'll make a suggestion, Bart, if I may. I think there's something to be said for putting your photograph on the business card, because sometimes you take a business card away and you think, who was this person again? So the photograph just helps. Oh, yeah, that's the person who had the poster about so-and-so.

SPEAKER_01: 9:54

Now, that is a piece of golden advice as far as I'm concerned, because my memory for names is frankly appalling. But I do like to hope that I don't forget a face. It might feel a cringe-worthy experience producing a business card with your own picture on. But actually, I think you're absolutely right. It's an immense help to folk who might not be that strong at remembering names per se. Anthony, thank you. Some really solid advice there. And so I believe in the next episode, we're going to be talking about something called the physicality of poster presentations, which sounds quite enigmatic. So I look forward to that conversation. So thank you for this material today. And I look forward to our next chat.

SPEAKER_00: 10:34

Thank you very much, Bart.