 Are you ready to share your awesome ideas or research with your community? Creating an effective poster is a great way to communicate your work, experiences, or new ideas with others. What is a research poster? Research posters are sometimes called academic posters, conference posters, or scientific posters. Regardless of what they're called, professors are usually talking about the same thing. According to George Hess, a research poster is a visual communication tool. It's the effective combination of images and text that communicates ideas in a way that neither text nor image alone could convey. Hess also suggests that students think about visualizing their abstracts. This means a research poster might contain the same sections as your abstract, such as an introduction, objectives, methods, and maybe even some results. Why do we create research posters? The research poster is often the entryway to participating in undergraduate research events. Whether those events are for your class, a conference or symposium held on campus, or even the National Conference for Undergraduate Research. One of the most valuable aspects of presenting a poster is the feedback you will receive from audience members. This means the conversations you may have with attendees at a poster session can actually influence your future work or research. But don't worry, you don't need to have your final results to present a poster. In some cases, you might be at the initial stages of the research process and use your poster to propose a study. Who needs to know how to design an effective research poster? Because professors often assign research posters as class projects, all students will likely want to know how to do this well. Additionally, you might also be interested in participating in an undergraduate research conference. If so, knowing how to create a poster is especially important for you. Even if you don't want to present at a conference, learning how to visually communicate your ideas or research is an important life skill. How do I get started creating a poster? There are a lot of elements to consider when you're creating a poster. At the beginning of the creation process, you should consider what story you're trying to tell. You'll want to think about the key elements you're trying to convey and how you will do it visually. You'll also need to consider audience, goals, content, layout, images, font, color, and more. Creating an effective poster is very different from writing a paper. However, many skills you've learned in the process will transfer. For example, outlining your poster and even drafting some of the content, perhaps for peer review, can be helpful. When do you create a poster? Creating a poster could happen at any time in your undergraduate career. In addition to possibly having a professor assign a research poster, you might hear about posters from the coordinator of the Office of Undergraduate Research, or even one of your friends who might mention a conference or campus event you want to participate in. If you have any questions about proposals, be sure to ask your professor or a librarian for help.