There is no reason to have anywhere close to 10 references on a poster except to fill up space. I don't think I've ever had more than 5 on a poster, usually 2 or 3 will suffice because The Lord hath given us a bounty of review articles.

The problem is refs on a poster are damn near useless. Most people don't even look at them. I'm not standing by a poster to write down all the relevant refs, and chances are pretty good I've got nothing to write them on. Refs on a poster don't count toward anyone's h-index. If you think refs really are necessary, then I would say have multiple copies of a separate list pinned next to the poster; there are better ways to use the space, IMO.

Ref's are debatable and I do try to make them really tiny, but I always try to reference stuff in any presentation whether poster or talk.  Its kind of a sticking point for me.  Better Posters is an awesome blog and always great for the first timer or someone wanting to enhance their posters.

After seeing a freaking a tie dyed theme background on a poster one time I swear it gave me a migraine headache.

ahh... you need to remember "don't do fancy colour one and fonts in fancy colour almost one" ... it's funny (not really) how many posters/presentations I've seen the last couple of years with novel colour combinations which most of them SUCKS to read from a distance. Have people never focused on the "contrast between fonts and background?".

Oh, and the font size.... but that goes with "remove large chunks of text and replace with bullet points" , which usually means you can increase font size to 'readable even from 2-3 feet away'.

I've never thought to actually bring hard copies of my references. That's a really good idea. I'll have to keep it in mind next time!

TJ, why don't you usually include your references? I thought that was standard protocol.

Re: readability of posters, one tip I recall from Doctor Zen's Better Posters blog is the arm-length test: Print the poster on a standard 8x11 sheet then hold it at arm's length. If you can read it, then font-sizes should be suitable for the full-size poster.

Yeah, I never include refs either on a poster. Its a poster. Only Becca's ruler-enemy is going to write down references to look up later.

Dude - 3D posters, come on now, that would be kinda cool!!!  This is a great reference piece for grad students.  Another pet peeve of mine was people who showed up to conferences with 9 bits of A4 paper printed out and stuck them up on the wall - it just looks so incredibly crappy and everyone else made the effort.  Though typically it was people who had some last minute crisis printing their poster.  I can remember a few close calls myself, the IT tech people at our printing facility were a bunch of morons and would head to the pub at 4pm everyday despite being open until 5pm, so there'd be a huge queue of posters waiting to print and a bunch of very PO'd looking grad students/postdocs waiting for their precious conference cargo!  Fortunately I always managed to get them done in the nick of time, but mostly because I'm stupidly organised and started about 3 weeks early!

Good stuff, which I've shred over at the Better Posters blog. (And thanks to those who mentioned it in the comments!)

My own thoughts on references: http://betterposters.blogspot.com/2009/05/references-on-posters.html

Also relevant, I think: http://betterposters.blogspot.com/2009/09/containment.html

Thanks Doctor Zen for posting that.  I'm a big fan of your blog and thanks for the great advice.

Ha! Will you be accompanied by 4 amphibians with martial art skills?

Nice one Nikki!  Or possibly a disembodied brain from dimension X or an intellectually challenged rhino or warthog!

You are looking at the guy who digitized that VHS.

My 2 3 bits.

1) If I feel the need to mention a reference on the poster, I just do it in the context of my bullet points.  Such as: " Smith et al (Journal of Things, 2010) showed that by doing x, y happened"  I agree that full references are not very useful on a poster.

2) Bringing copies of your own paper that's relevant to the poster is a great idea.

3) My opinion is to not have a canned walk through of your poster.  Just know you material and have a conversation.  Whenever I'm viewing a poster, I'm going to be asking questions and interrupting your mini-speech, which will annoy you because you'll have to backup a sentence or two to get back in the groove.

John,

I don't so much as want a canned talk, as I want people to have an idea of how to do a cogent walkthrough of their poster.  I have seen folks who print it up and then have a difficult time talking about it because they haven't given any thought on how to convey it in words as they have merely focused on getting ink to paper.  Also you you need to have a few short highlights and quick presentation for those that don't have a lot of time.  How many times has a PI or judge come up to a poster and said, "I'm pressed for time but think your abstract is interesting, what can you tell me?"  And you have to be prepared for that.

Haha - nice catch, GertyZ! I'm gonna plead that I clicked through from Twitter, so I skipped the title here, since I already knew what it was about. 

Good Catch Gerty.  PI's have a keen eye and you caught me as I tried to punch out this post during a busy day and did not check my spelling.

You've had electrolysis? WTF!