Create and assemble your display board. Follow the suggestions and guidelines on the Display Board handout. Your display board will have most of the same information found within your lab report. Your display board should be neat, interesting to look at without being distracting and have a professional appearance.
The Display Board
Standard display boards are 36” tall and 48” wide. For privacy reasons, and to make sure judges are impartial, most science fairs do not allow your name or any faces to be displayed on the front of your board or anywhere else in your displayed materials.
Display boards should be easy to read and appealing to view. They should have enough “flash” to make people interested, but not so much that it distracts them from understanding what your project was about. Information on your display board should be typed and carefully proofread. Font sizes of each section heading should be large enough to clearly separate that section from the rest. Text size should be large enough to easily read when standing in front of your display board. The font size of the titles should be large enough to read from across the room.
The style of your font should not vary from one section of your text to another; this will make your board look too “busy” when people are trying to read it. The project and section titles may have different styles from the text, but these should also remain consistent. Many people use colored construction paper mounted behind each section to make their boards stand out. Use rubber cement, a glue stick, or two-sided tape to stick each section to your board. White glue may make the paper wrinkle.
There are no hard and fast rules for exactly how to organize your board. Before you glue everything onto your board, place each section where you think it would look best. It is recommended that the amount of information in each of the panels look balanced, without too much empty space in any panel. Your board should include the following: Title, Research Question, Background research and Bibliography, Hypothesis, Abstract, Materials, Procedure, Results (include any graphs, tables, charts, and pictures), and conclusion. Where you place each of these on the board is up to you, but remember that people tend to start at the left side and read toward the right. In front of your display board you should place your science journal, your research paper and examples or models that help explain your project (if applicable). The images on this page are some suggested ways that you may choose to set up your display board.