Latest modern science: layout

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Kamis, 28 April 2016

Latest modern science | Link roundup for April 2016 - Si Bejo Science

Lisa Rost has a nice overview of colour tools to help with data visualizations. Some have appeared on the blog before, but this is a great summary.

MarkMaker bills itself as an automated logo designer (backstory here). It�s fun to look at, but I was unimpressed with the first suggestions:

I stayed with it, trying a few favourites and deleting ones I didn�t like. I was still baffled by this suggestion after a few rounds:

I suppose it might have a certain utility in getting you out of ruts, but I�m not convinced it has much more utility than randomly picking fonts in your graphics editor. Hat tip to Doctor Becca.

DrugMonkey reports from the floor of the joint American Society of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics Experimental Biology meeting:

Saw a poster with Supplemental Materials today at #aspet #expbio #eb2016 � this is where we are people.

I... wait... what? As Clay Clark asked:

On back side of the poster?

Let me make this clear:

That�s dumb. Do not do that.

We hear about viral images on the internet, but most don�t look this amazing. Even if they didn�t move, they would still be stunning scientific visualizations.

Kamis, 03 April 2014

Latest modern science | Text wrapping in Publisher, or, �Why are you still using PowerPoint for posters?� - Si Bejo Science

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Alexis Rudd made the poster below in PowerPoint.

But Alexis wanted something else to make posters. I asked if she had Publisher, often bundled with the same Microsoft Office package that contains PowerPoint. She did.

A problem with the poster above (similar to this one) is making sure elements sit nicely next to the curves. Just to give an example of how Publisher does this, I knocked out this example in a couple of minutes:

Here�s what I did. Inserted a text box with some dummy text. I inserted a picture on top of the text, and Publisher automatically flowed the text around the picture. The order is important; text won�t flow around objects underneath it.

I cropped the picture to an oval shape, and moved it away from the middle of the column. Right clicked the image and picked, �Format picture� and selected the �Layout� tab. Then I selected �Tight� as the wrapping style. And you see the results above.

It is still not on a par with pro typesetting; the large text size is creating some uncomfortable gaps. The text is ragged right; some of the jags can be smoothed out by justifying it:

Still not pro level, mainly because I can�t find any way to adjust the distance the text sits from the picture. For rectangular pictures, you can use �Square� wrapping style, and that lets you adjust the distance the text is from the object very easily.

But try doing something like that in PowerPoint at all. You will tear your hair out. Then...

Related posts

No more slidesters, part 2: Three Publisher tips

Kamis, 20 Maret 2014

Latest modern science | Misplaced priorities on institutional templates - Si Bejo Science

design layout

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Commenter k brought my attention to this poster template from Iowa State University (click to enlarge).

The template gets it exactly wrong. The order of elements at the top is 180� away from what it should be.

This template reflects misguided priorities. It�s intended to do one thing: make sure the institution�s name is the most important thing on the poster. I repeat this from Garr Reynolds (my emphasis):

The logo won�t help make a sell or make a point, but the clutter it brings does add unnecessary noise and makes the presentation visuals look like a commercial. And people hate commercials or being sold to.

The most important thing on the poster should be the title. That is the most important information for people walking by at the conference. The principles of text hierarchy suggest that the title should be bigger than all other text, and at the top of the page, and possibly in colour. Instead, it�s the fourth thing on the page, small, and in black and white.

The second most important thing should be the people. Posters are social objects, meant to facilitate conversations between people. Names matter.

Department and institution names are the least important things for both the reader (who is the one this poster is for) and the presenter.

Worse, the template adds space for the conference name and the date up at the upper right. Of what possible use are those pieces of information? Presumably, people know what conference they are attending. They rarely just wander into a convention center just on a whim. And I am reasonably sure most people do not need a poster to tell them the date.

The �Acknowledgments� space at the end is a box that spans the entire width of the poster. This is not a good typesetting practice, because long lines are hard to read. Most typesetters recommend lines be about 10-12 words long.

What a template should do is to help someone make layout faster. A template that offered a precise, evenly spaced three column grid would save someone a lot of time trying to calculate the column width, including enough white space, and so on. Instead, this template has just a single word box with �Content.� That�s not helpful to the poster maker at all.

And the moral of the story is: Just because your institution suggests it doesn�t mean it�s a good idea!

Kamis, 12 Desember 2013

Latest modern science | The one inch rule - Si Bejo Science

layout

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One of the most common problems on posters is that things are too close together, which creates the impression of clutter. Let me propose an easy to remember rule for you.

Every element on the poster should have one inch between it and anything else.

The tricky part is to determine what makes up an �element.� For instance, I would treat the following as single �elements.�

The title, author credits, and institutional affiliations.
A heading and the text below it.
A figure and its caption or legend.
A column.

Examples of different �elements� that should have one inch of space between them:

The title and any logo.
The authors list or institutional affiliations and the text below it.
The bottom of one section of text and the next heading.
Every picture or graph, top and bottom, left and right.
Separate columns.

Here�s a quick way to check. Sinply draw a long, skinny, one inch box. Or maybe two: one horizontal, and one vertical. Send these boxes to the �back� layer so nothing autoflows around them. Drag them anywhere to make sure there is enough separation.

Kamis, 14 November 2013

Latest modern science | Common problems - Si Bejo Science

grids layout text

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I teach a technical writing class in which I ask students to create posters. I give the students some instruction and and good ideas for poster layout. Generally, their work is as good or better than conference posters I see.

The top three problems are:

Clutter: It�s hard to generalize the sources of clutter. It ranges from unnecessary borders to gradient fills to too many elements on the page.
Proximity: People underestimate how much white space they need around objects. In particular, they don�t put big enough margins around pictures.
Text greyness: Even though my students generally do a good job of making the text large enough to be readable, they often end up with too much of it.

If there is a common element to these three problems, it�s the urge to put too much stuff on the page. Editing and cutting is a tough skill that takes a lot of practice to master.