With topics ranging from gender roles within golf, living with diabetes in college and planning the perfect wedding, being unique at the 2017 Honors Poster Presentation isn’t just recommended, it’s encouraged.

Taking place in the Great Hall of the Memorial Union on Wednesday, students in the Iowa State Honors program were tasked with creating posters and other external materials in order to represent their chosen capstone project.

The poster presentation is required by the Honors program and must be completed by a student’s senior year. Though Honors members must complete the capstone in a certain time frame, the topic options are almost unlimited and are encouraged to come from a student’s personal passion.

Research-based projects remained popular throughout the event, as graphs helped depict subjects such as the conflict in Syria.

Andrew Lipp, senior in history, created a map of the Middle East that depicted the various factions involved in the Syrian civil war. Yarn was used to connect allies with foes as Lipp attempted to simplify a largely complex conflict.

“I spent about a year reading news articles and scholarly journals in order to compile a 25-page paper,” Lipp said. ”This poster summarizes that paper in a way that is less complex in order to get the point across.”

Despite not being a political science major, Lipp took the subject based on his own personal interest.

“This isn’t for an exact class but it’s just something I found interesting,” Lipp said. ”It’s something that’s still changing now, but will probably be out of a date in a month just because of its nature.”

Research was not the only subject explored at the poster presentation, as Lauren Carter, senior in graphic design, explored an eye-appealing way to present her study abroad European travels.

After visiting Rome through Iowa State’s graphic design program, Carter felt compelled to share her journey, but not through the typical means of pictures and social media posts.

Tracking the amount of footsteps she took while moving from country to country as well as money spent, Carter created an infographic and scrapbook-type data booklet.

“As a graphic design major, a lot of what I do is figuring out how to make information seem readable and easy to understand,” Carter said. ”Being able to break down hard facts into pictures that people want to see was a challenge for me and made me want to pursue the topic.”

Stemming from her own personal research, Carter was surprised by her own findings, which included enough steps to walk from Rome to Germany in a straight line.

“Some of the data was quite astounding, especially breaking down a whole semester into images and words,” Carter said.

In total, Carter visited 21 cities and 11 different countries, which were all displayed on her board with step counts and money spent in the region.