At any science fair during public viewing hours or school assemblies, you’re bound to see many project display boards. Most are tri-fold boards measuring 36″x 48″.
An effective science fair board allows viewers to quickly understand your question, hypothesis, results and conclusions with just a brief glance – this requires an organized layout.
Visual Aids
Most science competition rules or guidelines specify display boards as required exhibits for project submissions. Usually these tri-fold pieces of poster board, foam core or corrugated cardboard include an abstract, literature justification section and experimental procedures and materials sections before concluding with results and conclusions sections which highlight scientific findings of an experiment. Many boards also use visual aids like charts or graphs to help judges and audience members better comprehend the information being presented.
A successful project presentation should be engaging and educational for its audience. A well-written report can play an essential role in meeting this objective; however, more effective presentations can also include visual elements like posters or boards created using software programs like PowerPoint, Google Slides or Canva that can then be printed out or saved digitally as PowerPoint or Google Slides files.
Textual Aids
Science fair project boards require students to organize and synthesize their research, testing, and results into an appealing presentation format. While every science fair project varies slightly in structure, most follow a similar format which typically includes an eye-catching title, abstract/hypothesis statement, background section, experiment description section and conclusion section.
Each section should follow an organized, logical progression so that their audience can easily comprehend what a student is trying to convey. This way, their target audience can quickly grasp what the student is trying to communicate.
Text should also be easily legible and does not compete with any visual aids on the board. Bold font can help make text easily legible; just be wary not to overshadow other elements on the page with its use.
Layout
Layout for science fair project boards may differ depending on your competition guidelines; generally speaking though, all science fair projects should include titles, background information about your experiment’s purpose, data collected during its execution, results presented along with charts or graphs that represent them visually.
Your project should include visual items like images and illustrations to make it more interesting, but they shouldn’t distract the judges from your information on display. Use different colors to frame your work; it will make your display even more striking! Keeping the board as organized as possible so judges can navigate easily through it; usually best organized from left to right and top to bottom is best as this helps readers follow along and understand your experiment’s purpose more quickly.
Colors
A science fair project display board is a trifold piece of cardboard used to present a child’s experiment or research at a fair. It should include titles, introductions and bibliographies (if applicable), with sections dedicated to showing how it was conducted such as independent variables, hypothesis/predictions, background research results.
Colors play an integral part in science fair boards, yet should never overshadow their content. Too many colors may distract judges from seeing all of your project details and become distracting for judges to evaluate your entry.
Cool colors such as blues, greens and violets are often more relaxing to the eye than their warmer counterparts; yellows, oranges and reds tend to be more intense and can become distractions for audiences. A good rule of thumb would be using white or black text on the board alongside colored paper titles and printouts for titles or printouts.