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Kamis, 08 Mei 2014

Latest modern science | Hang �em high - Si Bejo Science

Earlier this year, I wrote about a conference with one of the worst poster session layouts ever: one on top of the other, with the bottom one at crotch level.

Sadly, nobody at my own institution read this, or took the wrong lesson from it:

Posters upon posters, with the top ones so far above eye level as to be almost unreadable. Sigh.

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Hung low

Kamis, 01 Mei 2014

Latest modern science | Critique: Irrigation and butterflies - Si Bejo Science

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Today�s contribution comes from Andrea Barden (click to enlarge):

She writes:

I used a green and blue orientated theme as to me it linked in with the theme of the topic (irrigation).

This is a good way to try to approach the colour scheme. It is always helpful to just think, �What colour do people associate with this topic?� While you might be tempted to try �something different,� the risk is that you will simply confuse people instead.

I might have tried to simplify the colour scheme a little more, perhaps by not using the photographic background. The varying colours in the background change the foreground colours in the boxes, making it look more complex than it is.

I�ve tried to separate out the most important/interesting points using the blue boxes with the blue butterflies. It�s sort of a case of �follow the blues� in a way!

I like this idea, but am not crazy about the execution. The butterflies look like decoration, not guides. To have the butterflies guide people to highlights, they need to be consistent, and each needs to be clearly associated with one thing.

But these butterflies are not consistent. The orientation of the butterfly changes. Some are next to text, and one are next to a graph.

And these butterflies are often straddling boxes or other elements; the second one from the left is particularly bad in that way. Is it emphasizing the �Diversity partitioning analysis� or �Additive partitioning�?

The biggest issue with this poster, I think, is simply the volume of information here. There are too many elements in the space, and it looks cramped. A very hard-nosed edit to focus on the most essential elements would probably help.

I do like how the references and contact information are placed in the bottom, perhaps because it is one of the few parts of the poster that is not overloaded.

Kamis, 24 April 2014

Latest modern science | Link roundup for April 2014 - Si Bejo Science

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I�ve blogged about digital posters from time to time, but I have yet to see or hear them done well. Das Terminal is apparently trying to position itself for the inevitable future of posters on screens instead of paper (hat tip to Peter Casserly). Here�s some of their screens:

I�m not sure of the industrial location they chose to photograph their product places it in the friendliest, or gives the impression of something contemporary or forward-looking.

This is a very interesting article about how your colour choices affect how people interpret your data.

When colors are paired with the concepts that evoke them, we call these �semantically resonant color choices.� ...(S)emantically resonant colors can enable you to take advantage of familiar existing relationships, thus requiring you to use less conscious thought and speeding recall. Non-resonant colors, on the other hand, can cause semantic interference: the colors and concepts interfere with each other(.)

Here�s an example:

Hat tip to Nancy Duarte and Harvard Business Review.

Poster Session alerts PowerPoint users to some weirdness in how PowerPoint renders purples.

The reason is that PowerPoint works in the RGB color space, and the interpretation of RGB into the CMYK colors that a printer uses is not always what it should be.

A nominee for �Best poster title of the year�:

Heh. Jon Tennant says, �Just decided this is going to be the layout for every future poster presentation I give�:

Empathy with the user! That�s the heart of Justin Kiggin�s great answer to, �Why do scientist still read PDFs of papers instead of web versions?� Because publishers keep doing this to their HTML versions:

It�s the logo problem all over again. Stop giving us irrelevant stuff.

Here�s a nice set of answers on Quora over how professionals choose different typefaces. Here�s an excerpt from the top rated answer:

�How do I choose the right font� is such a simple question yet there are so many ways to answer it. ... As a designer, you are (or should be) always paying attention to design in your environment and media. If you notice a cool typeface in something, like a movie poster or a billboard, see if you can track it down later using Google searches or WhatTheFont, so you can add it to your arsenal for future use.

Also includes a link out to bad type choices.

For some weird, strange reason, academics seem to love Comics Sans. I don�t think it�s the right choice for most academic purposes, but, if you insist on that style of typeface, why not at least get cleaned up version of it? Presenting Comic Neue, a much improved version of the most maligned typeface. (I still don�t like the serif on the capital C.) Hat tip to Mary Canady.

But an even better choice? Use typefaces created by professional comic letterers!

Kamis, 17 April 2014

Latest modern science | Critiques: Newtown and white noise - Si Bejo Science

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This following two posters come from a contributor who has asked to have identifying information removed from these posters. The creator of these wrote:

Coming from a design back ground, research posters have somewhat astounded me.

I think you can see the design sensibilities in these. There�s a lot more thought to typography, colour, and layout than I usually see (or do myself!).

First, we have a neighbourhood poster that pulls off some sophisticated grids (switching from 2 column to 3 column layout), has good use of icons, and interesting type choices.

I would be a little concerned if this was hung in a conference session where the light was low. Some features, like white text on the light blue background, might wash out if it was in dim lighting.

The next one is notable for me because I always find �portrait� posters (taller than wide) tricky. This one uses colour to make the reading order, in bands, clear. The muted colour palette is effective and appropriately calm (for a hospital poster). The drawing of the hospital bed combined with the large and evocative type used for �White noise� is an excellent entry point. Indeed, the �White noise� is an excellent example of the beginning typesetting exercise, �Make the word look like the thing is represents.�

My concern is that there is a lot of small text there. I would be deterred from stopping at it because of that.

Selasa, 15 April 2014

Latest modern science | Guest post at The Conference Mentor - Si Bejo Science

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The Conference Mentor is a blog devoted to conference organization. They asked me a few questions about presenting posters.

I talk about why posters are a tool for democracy and talks are elitist; paying attention to those around you; and some pros and cons of PowerPoint.

Read the interview here!

External link

Perfecting the Poster Presentation

Jumat, 11 April 2014

Latest modern science | Time flew! The (belated) fifth anniversary - Si Bejo Science

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Whoops! I missed it!

I have had my head down doing a lot of technical academic writing. I completely forgot about the fifth blogiversary of Better Posters at the start of March!

It is a little hard to fathom that I�ve already been trying to make conference halls more beautiful, on poster at a time, for half a decade.

That I have made it five years, and kept the �one post a week� schedule steady throughout that time, is thanks to the readers of this blog. It�s my readers who convinced me I am doing something helpful here, and have given me lots of fodder to blog about. Thank you!

Picture by Gerry Dulay on Flickr; used under a Creative Commons license.

Kamis, 10 April 2014

Latest modern science | Critique: Sea otters - Si Bejo Science

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Jessica Hale tweeted this poster (click to enlarge) for the 2014 Northwest Student Society for Marine Mammalogy annual meeting with a request to make it, and I quote, �suck less�:

I tweeted these suggestions back to Jessica, which I have slightly elaborated on here.

A good design practice is to put things where the reader will need them. With only one reference, why not put it where the reader encounters it, in context: on the left column of text, instead of at the end of poster?

The �point of need� principle also means keeping related objects together. I like text describing results directly above or below figures, rather than all figures in one column. See this post for another example. Similarly, the statistical results could be put in the white space of the graphs, or in the caption, rather than in separate text in the results on the right, at some distance from the graphs.

Try removing the bullet points, and use normal sentences and paragraphs instead. PowerPoint, despite its name, often handles bullet lists fairly inelegantly, with strange indents.

Maybe the graphs could have same light blue background with no lines around them, so they would match the text boxes. This would mean picking the right colours for the graphs to match the blues. The figure in the left column might be a little more tricky to harmonize, but would be worth considering if it could be done.

Are the columns the same width? The right one looks narrower.

If you leave figures in central column, maybe you could consolidate the text boxes in the right and left columns into one box, not 2-3.

I wonder if you could have a stronger take home message. �Different otters are different� seems less memorable than you might like.

Try bolding everything you�ve underlined. As in, bold, instead of underline, not in addition to.

In a species name, �sp.� should not be italicized (see last bullet point under �Results: Season�).

Update, 3 May 2014: With a little advice and feedback, Jessica won the poster competition! Here is the final version she took to the conference, which you can see incorporates some of the feedback above.