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Animate Science has a “done in one” blog post about how to design a poster . Readers of the blog will find a lot of advise there familiar, but it’s very well done. It’s a much better “single serve” post than this blog is. (It’s not fair to expect newbies to read through nine years of posts.) I might do a few things in their sample a little differently, though. Why put that big, eye-popping octopus picture down in the corner? And those dark colours might not be very readable if the lighting is poor. • • • I’ve discussed accessibility issues with poster presentations before. But Sara Schley, writing for Inside Higher Education , argues that posters can, in some cases, be superior formats for students with accessibility issues: Consider a poster session . Many faculty members assign individual or team presentations as a culminating activity at the end of the term. The learning goals of such activities often include student synthesis of information, oral presentation and writing. But the e

Today’s poster is about the Capricorn Experiment, not to be confused with the 1970s conspiracy movie, Capricorn One : The only conspiracy in the new poster, from Vidhi Bharti at Monash University in Melbourne, is the justification for “Capricorn”. It’s supposed to be an abbreviation for, “Clouds, Aerosols, Precipitation, Radiation, and Atmospheric Composition Over the Southern Ocean.” The experiment should really be “Capracoso.” I mean, you just don’t get to make abbreviations out of any letter somewhere in the word! It would be like abbreviating the Univ e rsity of Te x as Ri o Gra n de Vall e y as “EXONE”. But I digress. Let’s look at the poster, which you can click to enlarge! Vidhi wrote: I work on boundary layer meteorology, which basically deals with a lot of mathematical equations and unattractive diagrams. Therefore, presenting it all in an attractive package is a big challenge. Vidhi does a good job of rising to that challenge with this poster. I like the way this poster tack

Today’s poster comes to us courtesy of Mi Tian. Click to enlarge! The individual blocks (like “Background” and “Research goals”) are good. I like the colour choices and the “pins” by the headings as graphic elements. The arrangement of the blocks on the page is not as good. The reading order is confusing. The little lines to the pins, plus the height on the page (i.e., closest to title), suggest I’m supposed to start with “Research goals”. But normal reading order would suggest I start with “Background.” I’d try flipping “Summary” and “Acknowledgements”, which would place those two blocks in positions that are more typical of where those are usually placed. The poster feels very crowded. Tons of elements are almost touching each other. The “Summary” heading is almost touching the edge of the blue box its in. The pin by “Introduction” is almost touching the graph above. All the logos down in the corner are almost touching each other. The “Applications” heading pokes up higher than the t

The hashtag #RSCposter is short for, “ Royal Society of Chemistry poster,” and it blew up on science Twitter this week. This was a seriously organized event , with rules as comprehensive as I’ve seen for some in person conferences. Organizer Edward Randviir explains (lightly edited): The goal of this is to provide a new innovative conferencing format that takes advantage of modern social media... We also wanted to gives presenters a free platform to present and discuss their work, and encourage particularly young researchers to participate in academic discourse to build their confidence. Twitter was the most appropriate social media platform. Many professionals across a range of sectors use Twitter for professional purposes, unlike Facebook or other social media outlets. Twitter limits the discussion to 280 characters, which challenges participants to be concise while communicating key messages from their work. This was the fourth time the Society had done this, but it was the first

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

Happy blogiversary to me! It is a little bit crazy for me to think that this blog has been running for nine years straight. And still going (reasonably) strong! It is mostly thanks to my readers and contributors – which is to say, you. I appreciate your attention, and hope this resource continues to help you. Thank you for stopping by. Picture from here .