Lucky seven!


This blog began seven years ago today. And it’s still one of my favourite projects. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I do writing it.

Picture by Lee Bryan on Flickr; used under a Creative Commons license.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Critique: RNA capping

Image
Today’s contribution comes from Melvin Noé González . It was presented at an RNA meeting at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories. Click to enlarge! He writes: Through the years I experimented with various templates for poster presentation, and I’m proud to say I’m really happy with how this one turned out. As you will find, I used a piece of advice you mentioned in one of your posts regarding a short summary section — and people loved it! I was approached by several people just because they thought the layout was cool, even though I wasn’t related to their research. I’m always glad to have feedback that advice works! The title bar works well, by presenting everything cleanly. The logo is sensibly over to one side, and blends into the background. The authors names are prominent, with institution and contact information legible, but low key. This poster is well organized, which helps walk you though what is maybe a little too much material. The numbers by each heading ensure you don’t ...
Read more

Critique: Keep the home fire burning

Image
Today’s contribution is a prize-winning poster from Alexandra Lai! This was presented at the International Aerosol Conference . Click to enlarge! The title bar is particularly well done. It’s an excellent example of a clear visual hierarchy: the title is biggest and in bold. A subtitle is big, but not bold. The authors are smaller, and the affiliations are smaller yet. And the type is fits the space, so there isn’t a lot of empty space on the right corner. The colour scheme is a little busy, but generally works. The main oranges in the title and callout boxes and blue in the background are contrast colours. The colurs in the graphs might benefit from being a little more harmonized with the two main colours. Some of the greens and pinks don’t seem to fit that well. Alexnadra has done a good job with the typography here. The font is clean, the emphasis is clear, and the table is not a mess of lines. In the Methods, I might like to see fewer words, but the words are set out in a very rea...
Read more

Critique: Manta ray thoughts

Image
This week’s contribution comes from Kenneth Chin. Click to enlarge! Let me get to a couple of good things before moving to the ways it could be improved. First, the title is big and cannot be missed. If a title truly is 90% of your communication effort (as I’ve argued elsewhere), this poster is ahead of the game. Second, there are lots of pictures of charismatic animals, including up at the top at eye level. It helps to have a subject that people generally like. I don’t know of anyone who hates manta rays. Third, the main organization is a simple pair of columns. The reading order is not confusing. That said, there are more frustrating things on this poster than good things. This poster is a compendium of common pitfalls. There is way to much text, way too close together. That the poster is so dense calls attention to awkward dead spaces in the poster, shown in red below. I tried a quick and dirty edit to move sections apart by shrinking the text and images a bit. I also took away the ...
Read more