On his travels, Gulliver meets a group of academics who, alongside a whole list of bizarre and pointless experiments, are attempting to alter the way we communicate by removing words and using things, literally carrying sacks of objects with which they share ideas instead of using words. Researchers are fervently working on a way to create a universal language by removing all words.
While in his book, Jonathan Swift was poking fun at scientists of the age, it brings into focus the question of how we communicate, particularly how we communicate science and research, something that still affects us all today.
Conference posters offer a great opportunity to share research on a level that is more accessible and digestible than many other formats. While conference papers, journal articles, dissertations, theses, and books are a plethora of words, often in the author’s native language, posters, on the other hand, have a limited space and a public presentation, therefore needing to be concise and visually aesthetic.
“A poster would be a prop,” Vicky Howe writes in her blog post “Thinking outside the (poster) box.” She discusses how many conference posters have fallen victim to becoming a wall of text, literal condensations of complex and wordy papers. By rethinking the poster as a conversation starter for your research, a jumping off point, rather than the final destination for your years of work, a poster can be transformed into something that actually communicates your message, rather than burying it.
When we move away from the conference world and into the marketing world, posters are a different being. When trying to sell something we know to keep things direct, snappy, and visual. But why is that different to a conference poster? Rather than selling a product, an author is “selling” their research, hooking in likely “consumers” and building new relationships with fellow researchers.
In academia, we often forget that the primary purpose of sharing research is to communicate complex ideas in ways that others can grasp and build upon. A poster cluttered with technical jargon and dense paragraphs fails this fundamental purpose, creating barriers rather than bridges to understanding.
Photos from ANESTHESIOLOGY 2024
Digital poster platforms have revolutionized this form of scientific communication, allowing for interactive elements that traditional paper posters simply cannot accommodate. Clickable citations, embedded videos, and expandable sections mean that the detail isn't lost – it's simply organized in a more accessible way. This layered approach respects both the casual observer and the deeply interested colleague.
Even though it was meant to be satirical, perhaps those scientists at the Academy of Lagado were onto something. Fewer words, more things.
We’ve trawled through our poster archives and found just a few examples of how, when it comes to posters, less can be more:
