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Kamis, 26 Mei 2016

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

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Matthew wins for best poster design cartoon this month:

You can see more of his cartoons at Errant Science. His inspiration for this one?

Just looked at a draft of a poster, there was text in size 2 point�

Just to drive the point home, let me say: Writing text in a 2 point font on a poster is dumb. Do not do that.

James Hamblin, writing for The Atlantic, has a fascinating article about using colour to increase the readbility of text. Here�s an example, where colour is used as a cue to tell you what the next line is:

This specific example is from a company called BeeLine. They have plugins for Chrome for the web and PDFs. Here�s this blog viewed in Beeline:

I haven�t had success with reading my PDF reprints in BeeLine colour yet.

The Atlantic article suggests there are many more possibilities to improve the reading experience beyond what we have learned from the printed page. I would not recommend trying it for a poster quite yet, because the unfamiliarity might be confusing or annoying for readers. A browser plugin is not like a poster: the reader has the control in the former, but not the latter.

The Atlantic article also mentions the Microsoft typeface Sitka (sample at right):

(Microsoft researcher Kevin Larson�s) team also recently launched a new font that was designed for the best possible readability. Called Sitka, it went through a multistep, iterative design-test process. Each letter was changed and adjusted to maximize ease of reading � as opposed to most other fonts, which are made to mimic typefaces that existed in print media. �Times New Roman was designed to work very well with the technology of the era,� Laston explained. (I asked him if he has, then, created the most legible font in history. He said he �wouldn�t go that far.�)

I might just try Sitka on my next poster.

I really enjoyed this blog post by Stephen Few about 3-D graphs. You know, like this one:

Not only is the article thoughtful, there are some great one-liners:

(P)oking holes in Edward Tufte�s work in particular now qualifies as a competitive sport.

And I like the conclusion:

It is important to realize that what is often claimed by infovis researchers is just plain wrong, due to bad science. I wholeheartedly agree... that we should not accept any data visualization principles or practices as gospel without confirming them empirically. However, we should not throw them out in the meantime if they make sense and work, and we certainly shouldn�t reject them based on flawed research.

Today in �Colour is a subtle thing,� Ed Hawkins looks at how �rainbow� coding for maps led to some incorrect interpretations.

Hat tip to Rob Simmon.

I�ve followed the fate of �dynamic posters� at the Neuroscience meeting since they were first announced. I think a fee to have one is new:

$150 fee to present a Dynamic Poster #SFN16? pass. - Drugmonkey

And the question remains how many people are genuinely using the format to its fullest:

80% of those are just people who wanted to give a talk. Rarely actually need video. - Dr. Becca

Michael Hoffman is looking for new graphics software:

Wish I had something that made it as easy to make diagrams as PowerPoint but still publication quality like Illustrator.

In the replies to this tweet, people bring up xfig, Sketch, Drawio, Omnigraffle, Canvas, Graphic, and Pages.

QUote of the moment:

�Typography is frozen sound.��Ran Zheng

Hat tip to Ellen Lupton.

Another university, another new logo freak-out.

Kamis, 31 Maret 2016

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

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I have to lead with Jeremy Fox on the Dynamic Ecology blog, which tells you a big mistake almost every poster makes:

The post actually said too much text, but you get the point. (And thanks for the plug for the blog, Jeremy! Hat tip to Meghan Duffy and Pat Schloss.)

Steven Heard delves into a topic we�ve discussed on the blog before: should you give a poster or a talk?

I think the poster option is underappreciated. Because talks are seen as the default, and because they�re easier to prepare, it�s easy to slip into preferring talks without thinking carefully about the advantages and disadvantages of each format. There are major advantages to posters � especially the very high quality of one-on-one interactions they can bring � and casually defaulting to �talk� blocks off opportunities.

Steven has conferences on the brain this month, as he also wrote about how he tackles conferences as a introvert:

I like all kinds of people � one or two at a time. No matter how much I enjoy seeing my colleagues and friends, I find large quantities of them exhausting.

Ellen Lupton has a free class on poster design up at Skillshare. You need to register, but that�s all. I did so and enjoyed it a lot. If you take the class, you�re asked to design a movie poster. The student gallery is quite fun. Hat tip to, um, Ellen Lupton.

The trick of posters is to take often complex things and present them in a simple way. Brains have a reputation for being complex, so how can they be represented simply? A nice article in Nature Methods applies design to neural circuits. The figure below shows a principle (show different connections use different arrows or different colours, but not both), and a before and after critique:

Hat tip to Adam Calhoun.

David Robinson offers alternatives to pie charts.

It�s a lengthy post that is probably helpful if you are fluent in the R statistics package. (I am not, so can�t judge.) Hat tip to Michael Hoffman.

As a biologist, I�ve seen this picture of DNA many times:

What I hadn�t realized until Kindra Crick tweeted it was that this iconic scientific image was drawn by the late Odile Crick, who mostly painted nudes. It was uncredited in the original Watson and Crick paper. Like Jane Richardson (who I mentioned last month), her contribution deserves to be better known. Again, it�s a reminder that good visualizations take some skill that not everyone has, and the impact a good visual can have is enormous.

Here�s how Twitter creates its visual style. Can you articulate a style for your poster as clearly?

Today�s lesson in the importance of typography.

Hat tip to Mark Fidelman and Nancy Duarte.

And now for something completely different: a television series recommendation. While you�ve been watching Netflix original series like Daredevil or House of Cards, this one might have escaped your attention because it�s a foreign language series (Japanese).

Atelier is just a lovely series about beauty, design, craft, professionalism, and mentoring: themes that often appear on this blog. It�s subtle, often funny, and so well observed.

Oh yes, and there�s a lot of lingerie. So it�s a little more visually interesting than academia. Recommended.

(I know, lingerie shows up on this blog more often than one might expect. But it�s not always my fault!)

�Too much stuff� image from here.

Kamis, 25 Februari 2016

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

link roundup

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I often use highways signs as metaphors for conference posters. This article describes the typeface selection for highways signs in the United States, and the decision to return to an older (possibly inferior) typeface. Hat tip to Amanda Krauss.

Speaking of highways signs, here�s how they might look if designed by academics:

Photo from Dan Taber at the recent AAAS meeting. Hat tip to Jamie Vernon.

The National Science Foundation has announced the winners of the annual visualization challenge, the Vizzies.

There are some nice ones there. I think this baldderwort image is close to the sweet spot for an academic conference poster.

What is it about pie charts that bring out the worst in design?

Vice magazine should know better than to make the thing above. Hat tip to Arthur Charpentier and Dawn Bazely.

Lenny Teytelman caught this rebellious moment:

There�s a longer post about the often confusing social media policies of research conferences here.

I just learned of Jane Richardson, who created a now standard way of drawing protein structure. Computers do it now, but her hand drawings are so lovely:

It�s a lovely example of how you have to think deeply about something to create a good graphic, but that good graphic can clarify so much for so many. Here�s a blog post and an interview with Richardson. She says:

Producing a good image is always a lot of work, making a single illustration that shows a point really well is always a challenge.

I still have to review Ellen Lupton�s How Posters Work, darn it. Meanwhile, here�s a summary of the book.

A list of logos that make good use of negative space. I do hope the UTRGV Vaquero starts making those lists one day.

Kamis, 28 Januari 2016

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

link roundup

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We have a new contender for �worst graph ever�: the pie cloud.

What... I mean... Why... I... I give up. Shudder. Hat tip to Andrew Gelman.

Pieter Torrez has an article on how to create a beautiful scientific poster.There�s good advice on use of colours, text, software tools. The only thing I�m not sure I agree with is adding a picture of yourself.

Eve Heaton decided to use the trick that every conference vendor learned long ago to attract passers-by:

Hat tip to Colin Purrington.

Because PowerPoint is so often used to make posters as well as presentations, I have to link to this long, thorough analysis of PowerPoint�s history and use. The history is impeccable, although the analysis of PowerPoint�s importance is variable and sometimes told in fancy academese instead of plain English. Here�s an excerpt I like (that applies to poster presentations, too):

Rich Gold, manager of the Research in Experimental Documents group at Xerox PARC and self-proclaimed PowerPoint maestro, characterized presentations as jazz. Slides are merely the starting point, the �bass rhythm, and chord changes over which the melody is improvised.�^...Reading from notes or slides violates the expectation that a speaker can lay it down fresh every time, connecting with the group around a commonly held artifact.

Check out the list of 2015�s most popular fonts. Plenty of gorgeous fonts, though quite a few would only be good in very small doses on an academic poster.

Kamis, 31 Desember 2015

Latest modern science | Link roundup for December 2015 - Si Bejo Science

link roundup

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I�ve been tracking hacks for videos on posters for some time. Now, Pieter Torrez is working on another version of interactive posters. Read more about this here.

This poster was nominated (informally) as the best poster of the Dutch chemistry conference:

Hat tip to Vittorio Saggiomo and Megan Lynch.

The poster above tries to make use of readily recognized symbols. But how hard is it to make a symbol that is universally recognized? Learn the origins of... Helvetica man.

Hat tip to Atlas Obscura and Ed Yong.

In Baby Attach Mode ponders whether a student should go to a conference alone. Some students have gone to conferences without me, and I�ve been fine with that. Others, I would not have suggested they go to the conference if I thought they would go on their own.

Is simplicity in design overrated? Robert Hoekman makes the case that things we often call simple are not so. He argues for clarity rather than simplicity. I think there�s a little semantic hair-splitting there, but there are good principles regardless.

Is it as clear as it can be? Then no one cares how complex it is. Build complex things if you need to build complex things. Just put your good design chops to work and make them as clear as you can. It�s the one thing you can do every time.

Part of a conference is about asking questions. Here�s a guide on how to do it well. Hat tip to Toby Lasserson and Anna Sharman.

Designer Ellen Lupton talks about design processes here. I like that even experienced designers still have issues picking typefaces:

Ultimately, you end up going with your gut, but looking at history and context can be a starting point.

Speaking of which, do designers ever realize they�re bad? The Dunning-Kruger effect suggests not, but this Quora thread has some interesting insights on design just the same.

Carolina G�mez reminds us that academics are unfriendly:

in a scientific congress, it�s always harder to approach the �big heads�. It�s not impossible, but circles are so established that breaking into them can be extremely difficult and truth be told, they are not very inviting to let you join. Talking with several of my friends who have left academia, I realized the feeling is a very common one. ...

The other thing about scientific conferences is the patronizing/condescending tone that some people (big wigs or not) take when asking questions after your presentations. There is always this �frenemy� vibe to these interactions: laboratories that are working in similar fields will ask questions that are aimed to throw you down, rarely to make your research better. It�s not that the questions are destructive per se (sadly, some are) but there are questions charged with dismissal of other people�s work.

What can we do to make scientific conferences more welcoming to newcomers?

Prof-Like Substance reminds us not to make figures in PowerPoint.

I just may have gotten a smartwatch in the past week. So I was primed for this story on how Fossil is going about trying to enter the smartwatch arena. I was fascinated by how clearly they prioritized design (my emphasis).

Fossil split its team in two. One team worked closely with Intel on the raw technology, making something as small and usable as possible. Another worked on the design and identity of the products themselves. If there were ever conflicts between the two, the tech team lost.

Kamis, 26 November 2015

Latest modern science | Link roundup for November 2015 - Si Bejo Science

link roundup posters on screens

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Posters are a visual medium. But not everyone sees equally well, and I�ve written about taking factors like colour blindness or presbyopia into account in design. But I had not considered the challenges faced by a blind presenter, which makes this article absolutely fascinating.

Ashleigh Gonzales (pink blouse on left) is blind, and her poster is on converting flat images to three-dimensional ones that could be felt by blind students. I�m fascinated that Ashleigh�s poster (abstract here), has Braille in the title and headings. I can�t make out whether this is actually readable Braille (i.e., raised paper) or not, but would love to find out more.

The Society for Neuroscience introduced �dynamic posters� a few years ago, and the response has been... well, flat. As it happens, I have not made it to this conference since these have been introduced, so I haven�t had a chance to see, or create, one myself. I�m tickled that the Neuwrite blog has a long post detailing the creation of a dynamic poster. To be honest, dipping into the process of creating something that truly exploits the dynamic format is intimidating:

My goal this year was to make my �dynamic� poster interactive. ... I didn�t know how to do any of this, but I new it is possible and that, with a bit of effort, I could figure it out. A �bit of effort� turned out to be 6 weeks of sleepless nights(.)

But the results are pretty amazing. Go to the post to see these in models that you can rotate and zoom.

The PLOS Paleo blog has started a series about academic conferences. Their first entry tries to characterize the type of people who attend conferences.

With this potential range of attendees in mind, there is no single uniform audience at a scientific conference.

Looking forward to more!

Apple has long been recognized as a company that spends a lot of time thinking about design. But former employees takes the company to task for forgetting the user (not to mention a few swipes at other products, like Google Maps):

Gone are the fundamental principles of good design: discoverability, feedback, recovery, and so on. Instead, Apple has, in striving for beauty, created fonts that are so small or thin, coupled with low contrast, that they are difficult or impossible for many people with normal vision to read. We have obscure gestures that are beyond even the developer�s ability to remember. We have great features that most people don�t realize exist.

Probably the deepest article in this month�s round-up. Hat tip to Clause Wilke and Leonard Kruglyak.

Vox magazine makes the argument that Y axes shouldn�t always start at zero.

I try not to be a zealot about things, but in general, starting axes at zero is a better practice than not. Will there be exceptions? Sure. As the Vox video points out, if you have negative numbers, you have to extend past zero.

One thing that Vox overlooks is that there is a standard way to extend a section of a graph: it�s to insert a break in the axis. It alerts a viewer to the non-standard start.

KatieSci on Twitter:

Presentation Preference choices for #EB16 abstract submission: Oral, Poster, Indifferent. The �Indifferent� is kind of cracking me up.

The �indifferent� abstracts are like this:

PeachPit Press asked Jim Krause for typography tips. I like these:

Explore your font choices THOROUGHLY before picking a winner.

Combine fonts that are either clearly alike or clearly different. Middle-ground=bad

Hat tip to Garr Reynolds.

Kamis, 29 Oktober 2015

Latest modern science | Link roundup for October 2015 - Si Bejo Science

link roundup

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A feature in The Atlantic asks a big question: Can posters still change the world? I�m unsure posters have ever changed the world, but no matter. Still a great article on the power of the poster format. Hat tip to Siobhan O�Dwyer.

The latest demonstration of how fonts affect interpretation...

Hat tip to Jim Ducharme and Danielle Lee.

I am an advocate of one space after a period. However, I appreciate this spirited defense of wider spacing after a period. In particular, the historical aspect of this blog post is well worth reading.

If the (early editions) Chicago Manual thought it was okay to use large spaces after periods, and it had been common practice among the typographers who invented these typefaces, can we seriously claim that the only right method to set them is with a single space after a period? I CANNOT BELIEVE THE GALL OF MODERN TYPOGRAPHERS, ARGUING THAT THE PRACTICE OF THOSE WHO CREATED THEIR FONTS IS ABSOLUTELY, UNEQUIVOCALLY �WRONG.�

Make it all the way to the post-script if you can. I still say the single space is the modern standard (this post has the single space winning out around the 1940s), and you shouldn�t put put spaces after a period. Hat tip to Robert J. Sawyer, from his Facebook page.

Above you see a nice critique and makeover of a poster. Not a scientific poster, but still. Take a few minutes to let John McWade walk you through the process in a nice video.

The British Library adds over a million public domain images to Flickr.

The title of this article � Should you ever use a pie chart? � is a bit misleading. It includes a lot of history as well as best practices.

Hat tip to Justin Kiggins, if I remember right.

This month is the huge Neuroscience conference, possibly home to more academic posters than anything else on the planet. Don�t believe me? Check this panorama from Dwayne Godwin:

Before the meeting, people sent tips! From Lauren Drogos:

Let people pause and read before trying to engage at your poster, some of us are shy and need a moment to muster.

Andrew Pruszynski wrote:

Meeting new people is the only reason to go to SFN. The posters/talks are just pretext.

I appreciate the sentiment, but I would replace �only� with �main.� I find seeing talks and posters useful. I find catching up with people I know useful.

And from Drugmonkey:

Think of your poster design as a massive troll. The point is to engender conversation!!!

Though I don�t necessarily think you should put this on your poster...

From the meeting:

Peer review: shit just got real. (From Dr. Jenn)

And there is the inevitable aftermath of deciding how to use posters after the session is done. Tal Yarkoni has decided they are a fine place to rest one�s weary bones.

A critique of common scientific presentations: �Your protein acronyms and figures look nothing more than ambiguous letters and Pac-Man shapes to us.�

Kamis, 24 September 2015

Latest modern science | Link roundup for September 2015 - Si Bejo Science

link roundup

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FoxTrot starts off this month�s link roundup...

Hat tip to J.D. Wikert.

�What�s that font?� Trying to identify a font is one of those tasks that, until recently, was something that in many cases could only be done by someone with a near encyclopedic knowledge in type design. Indentifont is a good tool for the rest of us. It walks you through a series of questions, and makes suggestions all the way.

Using Identifont, I was able to nail down the typeface on this book cover as a slightly compressed ITC Fenice...

And my new institution�s new logo as PMN Caecilia with a customized rockin� R. Bold, specifically.

Pro tip! Check the suggestions after every question. I found that sometimes, Identifont would make a correct suggestion that would go away after I answered more questions. I don�t know why, but there it is.

Be it resolved that:

It is unethical to present the same scientific poster at more than one meeting.

Drugmonkey started the debate; read the replies to the tweet for people�s responses.

There is an entire blog of free academic images. A promising resource, although it is a bit difficult to browse and search. For example, although this blog is all about images, it is entirely written in plain text.

Here are five reasons to go to conferences. Hat tip to Paige Jarreau.

How Scientific American makes its infographics. Quote from one of the illustrators:

The designer must realize that things are always more complicated than they seem. Particularly in any biological science. Moreover, any kind of catchy headlines like �we share 99 percent of DNA�, while not entirely wrong, are ultimately useless because they tell people nothing. Journalists must dig for surprising, engaging stories that reveal and manage complexity to the reader.

Hat tip to StoryBench and John Rennie.

Kamis, 27 Agustus 2015

Latest modern science | Link roundup for August 2015 - Si Bejo Science

link roundup reuse

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And this month�s winner for best repurposing of a conference poster goes to Will Mandy:

BioMed Central is starting a series on scientific illustrations called, What�s Wrong With This Picture?

The collection has three articles so far, each of which examines a different specific graph and how it could be improved. The one above takes on bar charts versus box plots and rescaling the Y axis.

This title for the upcoming Society for Neuroscience meeting is sure to ignite debate about whether posters should have funny titles:

12 things you didn�t know about high responder/low responder rats, stress coping, and the dorsal raphe. Number 5 will blow your mind!

Hat tip to My Cousin Amygdala.

Icons can be useful things for all sorts of graphics. There is a big icon library call the Noun Project that might be useful for in poster design. Its splash page boasts that it has 150,000 icons. I gave it a whirl by searching for �crayfish,� because those have been on my mind:

Not bad. You have a choice of downloading PNG or vector based SVG images, and it�s all available under a Creative Commons license. I will forgive them that two of their icons are definitely crabs and not crayfish. Hat tip to Paige Jarreau.

Astronaut Chris Hadfield has an album of songs from space. Fellow musician Jud Haynes (of Wintersleep) talks about the process of designing this cover.

Jud is an academic at heart:

I set out on the first phase of every good design project, �research�.

Hat tip to none other than the man himself, Chris Hadfield.

I�m a bit late to this article from two scientific illustrators talking about their craft. These guys are not doing literal interpretations of data, but they still want to get it right. Jon Hendrix says:

In my visual language, science is one of the easiest things to illustrate. There are so many nouns involved. The great thing with science, even in something as abstract as arithmetic, is there�s always some sort of image involved in it, and lots of stuff�whether it�s robots or plant material�that�s exciting to draw. It�s funny, sometimes when I do a science piece, I don�t have to draw things accurately, but I do want to value the science and the research.

Journal covers can have some similarities with posters: a big focus on key images and findings. Cell Press discusses how they pick their cover images: for the journal Neuron:

In particular:

(T)he editors have varying opinions within the team about what they prefer in a cover. Some like somewhat abstract images that require the viewer to stop and think about the connection between the visual and the experiment or idea it represents, and others prefer a beautiful scientific image over a metaphorical work of art. ... Images that look like simple reproductions of figures will most likely not be selected. In other words, no scale bars.

Rebranding a university is always tricky. I�m going through this process now. Penn State is doing this and has a new logo:. Compare the left (old) and right (new):

It hasn�t gone down well. I like the new Penn State logo in its overall design. The only problem is the eyes of the lion looks zombie-like, or, as one person said, �hypnotized.� But there isn�t much you can do about that when that is what the statue looks like:

I�d be a little creeped out having that on my campus.

Speaking of logos and rebranding, here�s an article about the creation of the distinctive NASA logo from the 70s.

Which conferences should you go to? You know, the location on the map doesn�t necessarily tell you about what the conference experience will be like. Jacquelyn Gill has some reflections on this based on her experiences with the Ecological Society of America conference:

I can attest that meeting location usually has little to do with the quality of amenities. Milwaukee, which had the lowest attendance in the last decade, is on a beautiful waterfront with lovely art deco architecture and great breweries. ... Portland and Albuquerque... were far from amenities and it was challenging to get to and from hotels and local restaurants. I hope more folks will realize this, and check out the places that aren�t as glamorous.

I wrote a guest post on the Edge for Scholars blog, describing the top three things you�re doing wrong on conference posters. Yes, I wrote and listicle, and yes, I feel dirty.

I�m also quoted in this article about the future of research conferences. The overarching theme seems to be that people want more interaction at conferences.

Kamis, 30 Juli 2015

Latest modern science | Link roundup for July 2015 - Si Bejo Science

link roundup QR codes type crimes

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This month�s must read is from Bethany Brookshire, a.k.a. the mighty Scicurious, who has been baking cookies for science. She is at the point where she is making posters showing the results of her experiment.

Her article is aimed at people who are still in school, but is worth reading even if you haven�t used glue sticks in a while. For instance, Bethany writes:

What makes a good poster stand out is one having what I call the three C�s.

Continuity: The poster should present a continuous story of your experiment. ...
Clarity: When you share your research with others, you want to make sure that what you did is clear. ...
Consistency: The style of a poster should be consistent to help the poster look clear.

Today�s lesson in why the spacebar was invented: to prevent the University of Florida art education department from embarrassing itself (hat tip to Jeff):

Default QR codes are kind of ugly. But here�s a way to make them more interesting. You can upload a small, high contrast image, and incorporate that into the code at this website. Fer instance, I took this UTRGV institutional logo:

And turned it into this QR code that links to the university home page.

If you squint a bit, you can kind of make out the shape of Texas! I could probably do better if I made a black and white image. Hat tip to Dustin Mayfield Jones.

While everyone is abuzz with the gorgeous images of the Pluto flyby, take a look at how the first television image of Mars was made fifty years ago this week. It�s a story of impatience and a lot of crayons. (Okay, pastels.) It�s a fascinating story of turning data into an image. Hat tip to many, including Sarcastic Rover.

�How big should the text be?� is a persistent, but not readily answered, question of poster designers. But there is a particular kind of poster where text size and visibility has to be rigorously assessed: eye charts. This article is an in-depth look at how eye charts were designed and have changed over time. Hat tip to Mocost.

Here�s one for conference organizers: how to make your meeting accessible to people who are ill or have long term disabilities. Another contribution: make sure chairs are available somewhere for the poster session for people who have trouble standing for long periods.

Album covers become iconic images. Album covers were some of the first things I thought about in design terms. One of my favourite cover designers was Malcolm Garrett, whose name appeared on records by many early 80s UK bands. Songwriter and business woman Little Boots talks about the creation of her latest album cover:

The more you learn about design, the more good descriptions of process become invaluable.

Follow this Twitter thread for some interesting comments on what people look for in a poster.

And I�m going to leave Andrew Farke with the last word this month: