Poster design & graphical abstracts

How to communicate your research visually

This workshop is the starting point to kick off your design skills. Learn the essentials of good design, how to avoid common design mistakes, and create user-friendly and clear designs that will help you get your message across. We’ve had many students win awards with their poster!

Design an outstanding poster or infographic & learn the basics of science visualizations for graphical abstracts

You can choose to focus on general design principles, poster presentations or graphical abstracts. We usually give this workshop in two sessions: a 3-hour interactive design crash course and a practical 4-hour feedback session where participants work on their own design and get help to improve what they create.

Suitable for everyone: from PhD students and professors, to support staff and project managers. No design skills needed!

English or Dutch

Online or in-house

What you will learn

Create a compelling title to get your message across
Learn the design principles to create clear designs. Hierarchy, contrast, emphasis, colors, consistency and white space
Examples of good and bad posters, presentations, visual abstracts and infographics
How to incorporate images and icons effectively in diagrams
Overview of tools and resources to use for your work
Data visualization: learn how to create better graphs and other forms of data visualizations
Accessibility and creating inclusive designs

*You will not learn how to use design software (although you might get some useful tips). You can work in any tool you’re familiar with, from PowerPoint to Canva and Adobe Illustrator.

A workshop by
Liesbeth Smit, MSc

Liesbeth combines her knowledge of science communication, technology and design to teach you how to communicate better to any audience. She asks tough questions to make sure you create real impact, and she’s excited to share her decade of design experience with you.

Her workshops are brimming with practical tips that you can apply immediately to your reports, presentations, posters and infographics. By following one of Liesbeth’s workshops you will learn the skills you need to get people to pay attention to your message.

In an engaging and interactive way Liesbeth managed to keep everyone’s attention online and gave us tools and tips on how to improve your work immensely with simple changes. I’ve now gone on to share these tips with friends and coworkers and would definitely recommend it!

Liesbeth taught me how to use design principles to make science fun and accessible for all, while maintaining the professionalism and scientific detail. An insightful workshop, which is an absolute must-have for scientists of all career stages and disciplines.

Ekaterina Katya Pchelintseva, Imperial College London

David improved his graphical abstract a lot during our workshop:

My thoughts about graphical abstracts have completely changed after the course, everything is important (figures, colors, contrasts, balances…) in order to transform a complex scientific message into something attractive for the readers. I will try to implement all the learned tips on my future designs!

David Pérez, PhD student French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission

This workshop is flexible!

Do you like this workshop, but are you looking for something slightly different? No problem! We offer our workshops in various configurations. In addition to the 4-hour version, we can give keynotes, interactive lectures or split the workshop in two or three sessions.

We can also combine some workshops to create a full-day program, or fit a narrower time slot by giving a lecture highlighting the most important insights.

Fill out the quote form below to tell us the time you have, the amount of participants and the level of interactivity so we can find a solution.

Science-communication-lecture-Liesbeth-Smit

One hour to multiple day sessions
Small groups up to 12 participants or large audiences
More or less interaction
For all levels: from PhD students to full professors and from support staff to full-on communicators.

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