The “wall of text” visual structure of academic conference posters

Posters created for conferences are a type of visual communication that used frequently by academics. There rarely any formatting requirements beyond fitting on their provided boards. Because posters usually researchers rather than experienced graphic designers, the structure conference may be influenced common format journal articles, where text is given primacy over graphics and structured as “introduction, methods, results, discussion.” To test this, I examined award-winning from large scientific society 5 years meetings. About three-quarters use “Introduction, discussion” to articles; about two-thirds columnar layout; most show multiple graphs cite references. Relatively few follow best design practices, resulting in “wall text” many posters.