Research Guides: Psychology: Visual Representations of Research

Infographic Templates

Infographics can be fun and engaging ways of presenting content in a more visual way. These sites all have easy-to-use templates to make it easy!

Synthesizing your Research into a Visual Format

Infographics and research posters can be a quick and efficient way of getting your research across to a variety of audiences. Whether you are taking what you have already written in a research paper or creating all new content, the steps are the same.

Research: Compile your research and examine the data, as you would for a traditional paper.
Purpose: What is the story you want your visual to tell? How will this be conveyed to your audience? What is your main argument or take away message?
Audience: Consider your audience. What is the right tone to take? What is an appropriate level of detail for your audience?
Refer: Find other data visualizations or infographics that you like. What format fits your story best?
Visualize: How do you want your purpose to be visualized? Start to consider various data visualization options (i.e. charts, graphs, timelines, icons, map, etc). Consider your colors, fonts, and images. How do they all play a role in the story you are telling?
- Remember to keep this simple!

High Contrast Color Palettes for Accessibility

Color Safe
Color Safe provides accessible color palettes based on WCAG Guidelines of text and background contrast ratios. Simply enter a background color, and determine the styling of your text.
Color Contrast Checker
The color contrast checker will determine if colors you are already using for background and text are WCAG compliant. Enter an RGB foreground and background color in #hex or integer format to see if it meets accessibility standards.
Coolors
Use the generator to generate complementary color schemes for your infographic. The color blindness feature allows users to preview what the color selection will look like for people with various types of colorblindness.
Adobe Color Wheel
Choose a color to start with, and the color palette generator will produce four additional colors that complement one another. Save the palette if you have an Adobe Creative Cloud account, or write down the hex codes to use with another tool. Adobe Color can also identify colors used in an image if you upload it under the "Extract Gradient" tab.

Poster Making Resources

There are lots of resources on campus to help with creating & presenting poster! Here are a few:

Canva Digital Poster Guide
Step by Step instructions for creating a digital poster using Canva!
Basics of Poster Design
Guidance choosing colors, fonts, and layout.

JMU Communication Center
Learn skills to enhance your presentations, including how to talk about your work and create data visualizations!
JMU Print Services
Send your poster here to be printed!
Scientific Poster Layout and Design
Step by step tutorial on creating a scientific poster
Designing conference posters
Tips with downloadable templates
The Craft of Scientific Posters
Design tips, examples, and templates.
Better Scientific Posters
Templates for a new & improved design for research posters if you want to try it!