flynn0013

Always fascinated by what happens to posters after the conference, particularly posters in the hands of crafty people. Beth Stuart says of her poster quilt: I’m not sure this version is any worse at communicating science than the original. Hat tip to Katy Kennedy . • • • • • As part of a larger argument about public engagement, Bex writes : Imagine if our poster sessions were held in public transport stations and you had to explain your research to commuters - and have an eye-catching poster! If anyone does this experiment, let me know! • • • • • Nice thread from Tracey Weissgerber on graph design. It’s based on this article from 2015 , so I’ve probably mentioned it before in this blog. • • • • • Speaking of complex graphs, Predromics has purrfected the box-and-whisker plot: Hat tip to Ai Lyn Tan . • • • • • I’m had to ask Alisha Oshlack what a “rapid fire poster” is. But the Genome International 2018 meeting had them! It was a super short talk – one, single slide – that a person c

Today’s poster comes from Jennifer Pannell. Click to enlarge! Before I get into some details, Jennifer noted that this poster isn’t exactly the way she wanted it to look: I had some problems with the font, though. Scribus won’t embed them and so they look terrible unless you zoom in 100%, so it might look terrible as a png. I don’t know if the export problem might explain a few little issues, like dumb quotes instead of curly quotes. Or that there are lines after paragraphs on the left, but not the bottom right. “Fig” should probably have a period after it throughout. Jennifer’s poster has a clear two column format, with some attractive graphics to bring the casual browsers on board. There are some positioning choices I find odd, though. There is more open space on this poster than many I see, which is good, yet somehow items still seem to end up feeling crammed together. For example, here’s a close up on the upper right corner: There is open space around the images of the bird, and th

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

Posters are like muffins. The top is so much better than the bottom. In muffins, the top is better because of the wonders of caramelization , and because that’s where it’s the easiest to put on ingredients like chocolate chips, glaze, fruit peeling, cream cheese, or what have you. The bottom of muffins are just okay in comparison. It’s not surprising that there are many products that are designed to give people only the delicious muffin tops and not the less appetizing muffin stumps. In posters, the top half is better because it’s sitting at or above eye level. The title is above eye level, which is important because it moves the title above most people’s heads so it can be seen from a long way away. The space underneath the title sits right around typical eye levels, and that’s where people look the most. Put as much of the good stuff on your poster in that top half. Your big, important question, hypothesis, or prediction. Your sexist, biggest result. Your bold interpretation or co

Besides writing this blog, I am currently the chair of the Student and Postdoctoral Affairs Committee (SPDAC) for the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB). Today was the abstract deadline for the next meeting in January 2019 in Tampa, Florida . Did you put in a poster abstract? If you did, I want to help! I am planning on doing a short online class to have SICB students and post-docs make posters that rock. If you are interested in taking a short online class to improve your poster for the Tampa meeting, click here to go to a form! I need to judge interest so I can plan on the best way of making the class happen. Please reply by 1 November 2019! External links Information form for SICB poster class planning