If you are attending a broad-topic meeting, many of your poster-viewing audience may not be familiar with your field. The introduction section of your poster may actually be the most interesting to them. A simple figure that introduces the viewer to your system can go miles towards keeping your viewer’s interest and helping them understand the context of your experimental question. I made this blood vessel figure to introduce the concept of cytoadherence of blood cells during cerebral malaria for a student working in the Aliberti Lab.

Introductory figures serve as a visual aid for the poster presenter to gesture towards when describing their field.

During cerebral malaria, infected blood cells start to adhere to the endothelial cells lining blood vessels in the brain. This disrupts normal blood flow and can lead to death of the patient. A simple figure like this costs $30 and adds life to your poster. Here is how the whole poster came out:

Before:

After: