《effective_poster_design》.pdfVIP

Education fo r Health, Vol. 15, No. 1, 2002, 79 – 83 PRACTICAL ADVICE Effective Poster Design 1 1 2 JAN VAN DALEN , HENRI GUBBELS , CHARLES ENGEL , KHAYA MFENYANA3 1Universiteit Maastricht, the Netherlands; 2 University of London, UK; and 3 University of Transkei, South Afric a Introduction A poster is an abstract. The mistake most frequently made is to put too much information on your poster. Your poster should be an eye-catcher, containing a brief message , understood at a glance. It is claimed that you have about three seconds to catch the audience’s attention. To achieve this ’’three second hit’ ’ there are some aspects that you can take into account when you set out to design a poster. This brief didactic paper addresses the issues that help you create an attractive and effective poster (BMA BLATHE, 1973; Newble et al., 1994). Steps in Poster Design . What is the ’’overall message’ ’ you intend to present ? . Dene your audience: who do you want to reach? How expert are they? What can you assume to be common knowledge ? . What should the audience remember ? . Gather content: before editing, write down all aspects of your message that you can think of – the essential issues, arguments, items of evidence, explana- tions, conclusions. . Think of a sequence that will hold the audience’s attention and lead the eyes and mind to follow your argument from its start to its conclusion. . Create sections: classify the information that you have gathered . Address for correspondence: Jan van Dalen, PhD, Skillslab, Faculty of Medicine, Maastricht University , PO Box 616 , 6200 MD Maastricht , The Netherlands. Tel: +31-43-3881793 . Fax: +31-43-3884127 . E-mail: j.vandalen@sk.unimaas.n l Education fo r Healt h ISSN 1357–6283 print