My lab uses this video as a resource for anyone creating a poster... I'm about to make my very first poster to present and this was SO HELPFUL. THANK YOU!!!

Fantastic! Finally, some great guidance on how people consume information translated into posters! I've shared both videos widely! Now if we can just work on how all this great research and information gets transmitted to those who need it to make better decisions! Thanks Dr. Mike!

Wow! This was amazing. I work in learning services and am regularly asked to critique student posters or teach them how to create posters. I will be bringing a new lens to that work. Thank you so much!

It was an eye-opener. No one taught me before how to create more visually appealing and easy-to-grasp posters. We are always running after full of text/pictures posters and those are a bit too overwhelming even for the audience with a scientific background, let alone the general public.

This is super helpful and fun to watch. I was feeling uneasy about which way to go but ready to surprise and delight! Thanks Mike!

Using this video to teach students in my undergraduate technical writing course! Thank you!

not me watching this the night before a poster session 🙃 from a fellow spartan, thank you for the insights!

Oh my gosh. Loved that. I feel totally inspired! Your video was linked by the Western Institute of Nursing, a regional research organization for nursing and other health care professions. I'm excited to make a better poster for this year's conference :)

Organising a virtual conference and will definitely be recommending this video (and referencing Mike) in the guidelines!

🏆 From a long-time communications designer - well done, sir!! A perfect example of watchable, well-paced storytelling that communicates a sh*t ton of value! Have you discussed your video-making style and process somewhere?

simply amazed and will use in an upcoming poster in April. Thank you.

Love this so much! Can't wait to try it out at my next conference!

Many thanks, these two videos gave me plenty of input to tackle my first poster. I love graphic design and writing music so I'm happy that your scientific research is proving value in art and how it crosses over into STEM.

We really need people like you in the scientific community, I hope you will continue to do the same thing with conference presentations. Thank you!

it really catches your eyes. I like the new design.

This is phenomenal!!!!!!🤯

Brilliant! Using "Next Level" for a Dissertation of Distinction poster. Thanks!

“Daydrinking which some people call networking” truer words have never been spoken

Thank you so much, sir! I hope all goes well for you!

This video helped me make a great poster for my school, Thank you!

This video/content was helpful.

I loved your video!!!

Wish I had more poster videos to watch. The others aren't as persuasive as you. Hope to see more, subbed!

Well Done!! I laughed a lot with the first video and this one =) more importantly I hope my posters are BETTER this year!!

I am a doctoral student in Learning, Design, and Technology with a Master's focused on Instructional Design and Online Learning, 20+ year's experience in both adult literacy learning and professional development presentation, and another master's in Education. All 3 of these videos are AWESOME. I have subscribed, already shared #betterposter Part 1 with my ID research group & Professor, and plan to share ALL of your videos with a BUNCH of other conference organizers and Instructional Designers. Thank you for your contribution to Science, academic conferences, and Grad student sanity.

Great suggestions, will try following them. More portrait ideas and template would be welcomed as in Europe that is much more common (in my experience)

Applicable across topics. Like!!

This is real innovation

Absolutely engaged in this video from the beginning! I was dreading that my prof posted two 20 minutes videos... however, I loved them! My psychology self loved the behavior psych information in this--and the weirdness!

Your site was recommended by the IHI Forum. I will make my poster using one of your templates. See you in December in Florida.

wow awesome

Lmao this was really great and super helpful, and your voice and the way you communicate is really entertaining and informative. Reminds me a little of the guy who voiced the MC from SAO abridged. I'll definitely share this with people I know that would like this

Me at first: Do you expect me to listen to your 20-min rant? 20 mins later: I can't wait for my next poster session!

OMG this is the video I needed, working on my first academic poster. Thank you.

"Which dummy calls 'networking.'" LOL. Way to call me out.

I can't believe I just spent 40 minutes watching both better poster video! It's 4:50 am! and I have a poster presentation due in 9 days.

Not a scientist - still thought this was really useful for thinking just about how I communicate at work for presentations, guidance docs, public communications, etc.

Brilliant

This is incredible! It took guts to challenge the status quo; thank you! This is exactly what the scientific community needs.

Very nice!

You are master!

Great material, I really hope that one day people in academia will be open to these new type of designs.

great Job!! thanks for sharing !!!!

Very good. I'm designing my first academic poster. I hope to design sth nice.

Excellent content, congratulations.

Waaaw 👏👏👏👏

This was phenomenally done.

Making my first research e-poster for my first research paper for a scientific conference! and you are a saviour!! I guess things will be a bit different with 'e-posters+ video' format now in the pandemic era?

very good

One of the rare occasions where I spent 20 minut watch a video on KZfaq

Is there an ETA on the virtual/online poster video? (Like, should I just start working on my poster now, or will there be a video released before my deadline giving me a valid excuse for prolonged procrastination?)

I giggled so hard at the "citation".

Amazing video! Thank you! It made me wonder about the relationship between marketing and science. As in many other fields in this period of information flood, using marketing in science might be inevitable but it should be carefully and wisely used

... scientists not thinking about the posters and takking into account new findings about attention and learning is an equivalent of ignoring some key findings in chemistry/physics/math. What I wanted to say, is thanks for a wonderful video.

Very interesting to watch, even if you don't make scientific posters.

I think most poster presenters are students, and they are constantly seeking PIs approval to do something creative. I really appreciate your compelling story, and references I hope this will change the perspectives of many PIs, and will lead to more effective communication of science.

UX is a great way to take this so we are equipped to iterate

When is the TED talk :D This was great and my posters will change from now on. Thank you so much!

Hi Mike, are any of your studies out yet by any chance? I would love something to nail to the proverbial door on this subject!

this looks great. question where should the qr code take you.

You're idea is the best thing that has happened to conferences potentially ever.

Dear Mike, the poster templates are unavailable on the link provided. can you please share them again?

What are your thoughts on virtual posters where the viewer has more than 10 secs to view? Would you still use the same #betterposter format?

I wish if there's a similar video teaching us how to more efficiently interact with posters/presenters in a poster session!

Great #betterposter Generation 2 video and accompanying PPT. Now with many/most conferences being online, do the same principles of User Experience Design still hold? For example, now no time pressure or interaction costs?

What software did you use to create this video?

I would add a description to the QR code, that people will understand what the code does.

catsup with lids on the bottom absolutely suck, but otherwise everything here is bang on. :)

I try this and designed a nice poster for a conference, but my supervisors didn't like it, they say that if something has worked for 30 years it means is proof as a method of doing things, I was really sad and I have to redo my poster. I like the idea, but it seems old professors won't let it go through.

Do you feel there should be two versions of a poster - the one for the conference (created as recommended in the video) and one for the deposit online or in conference proceedings that has more written detail?

te amooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Good stuff, Mike. LOL. Are you a fellow Spartan? Go Green, my dude. 💚

4:52 it was super funny

I will bet that this approach also works for powerpoint teaching slides: less big paragraphs

I really like your use of user experience as a guiding principle for poster design; I think most posters could definitely be improved through ruthless "Tuftian" editing. But I am left with some questions. I'm curious as to why you seem to insist that many scientists are in "browsing mode" at a poster session. From what I've witnessed, many of them (most?) map out which areas of concentration and posters they'd like to stop at ahead of time; they know that they have limited time and brain power (so...self-aware dummies?). I'm sure some of them would be very disappointed to arrive expecting to see some interesting figures, and instead being greeted by one huge chart, or worse yet, a QR code that just directs them to an online publication. I also wonder what your approach to online posters is. Having a QR code on an online poster is just redundant, and only including a few figures seems a bit spartan (given that most people can read extremely fast, and again have probably pre-scoped the poster offerings). I'm also a little concerned that your advice about aesthetics is pretty much "just make it eye-catching and fun." As a designer, my experience is that "eye-catching and fun" for a lot of people = abuse of fonts, colours, gestalt principles and just generally making something visually cluttered and distracting. I'd like to see scientist take more of an initiative in getting some education in design principles, rather than resorting to the "silver bullet" solution of a template.

Great video but why is it so hard to find anyone explaining how to actually make the poster? (using powerpoint or google slides) I dont know what CRAN is or github so i have no idea how to use those templates? Am i just dumb or missing something?

Great, but it's also important to make sure stuff is spelled right (balloons) and to spell out stuff like BDNF.

17:37 oh no this graph is making cry...

Hi there and thank you. Do you also have ideas for videos in portrait format? Thanks in advance.

What software do you need to open the template?

New poster session = Scrolling Facebook for scientists.

Did you remove the templates? I'm getting a "Page not found" error.

Woohoo!! Awesome!! One day I hope to say goodbye to the wall of text forever 😍

As a scientist also concerned with how to present science, I would strongly advise to take this video with a grain a salt and refrain from using "betterposter" templates. Removing walls of text and using intelligible titles are indeed two key elements for making a great poster, but that's hardly a new idea. That's basic presentation skills - though I do agree many scientists still lack them. However, this video really confuses scientific presentation and YT/Twitter/etc. science when it comes to "challenge mode" and "next level" techniques. In scientific communication, we should precisely fight against some basic human instincts like oversimplification and cookie-cutter answers. The ideal poster should have a title and a picture that clearly present the context and the problem to anyone from the broad field of the conference, but it should absolutely not try to oversell their science like many "betterposters" I've seen do. The last ideas presented in the video, ie how to encourage people to walk around and get as much as possible of posters in 30s, would be particularly detrimental to science. In a poster session, you should not be "foraging" for new knowledge - if you do you will only get cookie-cutter ideas without scientific content. You should get a grasp of what kind of problems, methods, ideas people are using - which you obtain if people use understandable titles for example - but not necessarily focus on "solutions" or "results" obtained people obtain from them. In a typical poster session, most of the science is still a work in progress so you should absolutely NOT push new PhD students to oversimplify their work with some cute pictures to pretend they have a result. Then you should settle on a couple of posters that you are actually interested into and engage a discussion with the presenter to talk actual science and discuss their result in details. Yes, it's hard to do and talking to strangers is scary. But hey, being a scientist is a job you're paid for, no reason for it to be as nice and cosy as watching cute oversimplified YT videos. Certainly, presenting a select few clear-cut results like the existence of climate change is very easy to do with a single big image. But let's be realistic: with the same method 99% of posters just fall flat and look silly, for example if they simply have no conclusive result yet. Posters should be simple, light in text and readable. Not oversimplified in just one picturesque result.

What do you use to make these posters and poster layouts?

17:06 that’s what they do in Louvre, they just queue to see Mona Lisa once and go home XD

Only 30 comments!?!?!?! It's like finding an oasis in the desert! Maybe it's the happiest day of your life but there's no one else to share it with.

Love losing the wall of text to what you should know

How do we download the templets as PowerPoint slides?

Good content and suggestions. Ironically, though, it's a video about avoiding loading people with too much information at once, and it's 20 minutes long and loads you with information. Shorter snippets are more digestible by this generation of scientists.

Ketchup bottles that are designed to be stored upside down can be incredibly frustrating. I detest them!

y to have knowledge of soft to use tNice tutorials software?

Pleaseeee, can you be my teacher at my PhD program???? UwU Your 2 videos about scientific posters design are revolutionary. Spread the message!

I don't mean to come off strong, But I love you. Man I laughed so hard at 4:31, That's hilarious 🤣

In your super-fast reality, why is the video 20 minutes? Any way to shorten it?

hahaha this video is straight on point🤣😂🤣 How you know this ?

Basically asking scientists to be artists lol "Stem" - "Steam"

The way the word 'citation' is voiced makes me laugh😀🤣😂

With all due respect, I disagree with the extent to which a poster needs to simplify/de-clutter to become "better" at delivering the material. A good title already gives those at the session an idea whether one wants to hear more about the idea or not. Aren't we involuntarily gaining skills to get an idea from small excerpts from an overabundance of information being published? Sifting through e-alerts by journals/bioRxiv bombarding the email every week? anyone?